mail2twitter

Introduction

mail2twitter allows you to share a Twitter account with other persons without having to share the password. You can tweet and follow users by email.

Requirements

You need Python 2 to execute the script. mail2twitter depends on the following packages:

• pyicu
• tweepy

Configuration

Before using mail2twitter for the very first time open the config.py file to configure the application.

mail2twitter stores information in a database file. You can specify the location with the DB_PATH setting.

To send and receive mails enter all POP3 and SMTP related details.

Now login to Twitter to create a consumer key and secret. mail2twitter needs these values to access the Twitter service endpoint. Copy both strings to the configuration file (CONSUMER_KEY and CONSUMER_SECRET).

mail2twitter can handle mails in HTML format by using the Lynx browser for rendering. Therefore set the path to your Lynx binary (LYNX_EXECUTABLE).

Usage

When you have finished the configuration you can create your first user:

$ mail2twitter.py --create-user [username] [firstname] [lastname] [email]

There are two options available to query user information:

$ mail2twitter.py --show-users
$ mail2twitter.py --show-user [username]

If you want to enable or disable an account use the –enable-user or –disable-user option. Please note that mail2twitter will only process mails from enabled users.

To post a tweet an enabled user has to send a mail with the subject "tweet" to the configured mail2twitter email address . The body of the message will be tweeted.

It's also possible to change friendship. Therefore send a mail with the subject "follow" or "unfollow" to change the relationship. The message body can be a comma-separated list of Twitter user names or a single name.

Running mail2twitter with the –fetch-mails option it receives mails via POP3 and stores the received commands in an internal queue. You can print this queue with the following command:

$ mail2twitter.py --show-queue

To process the queue use the –post option.

When mail2twitter receives mails or connects to Twitter it will generate various messages (e.g. when a received mail is invalid). It's possible to send these messages with the –send-messages option. mail2twitter uses the defined SMTP credentials to transfer mails.

You can print a list with all available commands by entering

$ mail2twitter.py --help