The first thing you need to do is head on down to dev.twitter.com. In order to create an account, all you need to do is click on the "Sign In" link at the top right.
The first thing you need to do is head on down to dev.twitter.com. In order to create an account, all you need to do is click on the "Sign In" link at the top right.
Next, sign in with the Twitter account you want to associate with your app. You do have a Twitter account don't you? Sign Up click here.
Once you're logged in, click on the downwards arrow to the right of your Twitter image and select "My Applications". This is where all your registered Twitter apps will appear.
If you are new to the Developers site you won't see any applications registered. Either way, it's time to create our first application. To do this, click on the big "Create a new application" button.
It's been easy so far, but this screen often makes people confused. Don't worry, it's a lot easier than you think. First of all you need to give your app a unique name (one that no one else has used for their Twitter app). Since we're going to be an creating app for personal use and not one that other people can register and use, just put your domain name in or perhaps even your name. You don't have to worry much about the description you can change this later. I've put "a set of Twitter tools for personal use".
Put your website in the website field don't worry that it isn't (as Twitter ask) your application's publicly accessible home page. However, this website will be where your app is hosted.
For now ignore the Callback URL field. If you are allowing users to log into your app to authenticate themselves, you'd enter the URL where they would be returned after they've given permission to Twitter to use your app.
Once you've done this, make sure you've read the "Developer Rules Of The Road" blurb, check the "Yes, I agree" box, fill in the CAPTCHA (don't you just love them) and click the "create your Twitter Application" button.
You'll then be presented with lots of information, but we're not quite done yet. We now need to authorise the Twitter app for your Twitter account. To do this, click the "Create my access token" button. This takes a few seconds, so if you don't see the access tokens on the next screen, you may have to refresh the page a few times.
This access token will allow your Twitter application to read Twitter information. You'll be able to get data of your tweets, mentions, lists and more. However, if you want to do more advanced stuff like sending tweets or deleting, you'll need to change your access type.
As I mentioned, the default access type when you create a Twitter app is read only. My recommendation is to keep it like this unless you really want to be able to have the app delete or write data (for example sending tweets or deleting direct messages). For our first Twitter app we will only need read only access, but so that you know for future, in order to change the access type, you need to click on the settings tab at the top of the screen. Once you do this, scroll down to where it says "Application Type". Change the access type to "Read and Write" to be able to read Twitter data and send tweets and select "Read, Write and access direct messages" if you want to also have access to your direct messages.
Once you've done this, make a note of your OAuth settings. You will need these long horrible strings of characters for your Twitter app. The ones you will need are:
- Consumer Key
- Consumer Secret
- OAuth Access Token
- OAuth Access Token Secret
It goes without saying that you should keep these secret. If anyone was to get these keys, they could effectively access your Twitter account.