Help me automate twitter

July 6, 2015 8:36 PM

So i've recently come to grasp the power of IFTTT and twitter together. I'd like to experiment with some slightly more advanced twitter automations. I'd like to make a script to use twitter to directly access articles using my institution's URL. More below the fold

Here's the issue.

This journal (http://annals.org/) has an RSS feed that I like.

The problem is, to get the article, you need to log in to my academic institution and find the Dx-Doi and - yeah thats like 3 clicks too many. My institution's setup is that you can actually insert the DOI into the URL and it will search for it (after logging on). I.e. http://myinstution/get.php/?=doi-(Insertdoihere) will work

What'd like to do is this:
1. RSS (feed here) of journal website is updated

2. Script follows RSS link and extracts the doi (usually displayed prominently here)

3. Tweet: "Hey, check out this link" and then have it link to http://myinstution/get.php/?=doi-

Is this hard to do?

I should clarify that in no way am I bypassing the academic instiution's log-in - the person is still prompted to log in.

Thanks!

posted by cacofonie to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

This doesn't necessarily help with the automation part, but your library might have made (or you can make) a bookmarklet to get access more quickly: for example. They might have also made (or you can make) a LibX toolbar to get access more quickly. You might still have to navigate to the publisher page, but then you could click a button to authenticate. If you like to read articles on a mobile device, you might also check whether your library has subscribed to Browzine. That pushes new Tables of Contents from your favorite journals (depending on publisher) to your device, but your authentication is saved, so you can just click through to whatever looks interesting.
posted by unknowncommand at 8:45 PM on July 6, 2015

Response by poster: That's really neat! So I do have a bookmarklet, I just need to find a way to transform the RSS link and append it to this address:

http://mylib.myuniversity.ca/login?url=

and have that be tweeted out. Seems easier but still not 100% sure how to do it.
posted by cacofonie at 9:06 PM on July 6, 2015

You bet this can be done. I would suggest browsing the twitter API documentation, specifically the REST API for automating the posting. To check for new posts you might have to use a bit of coding, but there are lots of libraries out there.
posted by z11s at 9:15 PM on July 6, 2015

Response by poster: So I figured out the answer to this: It's called Yahoo Pipes. It's the best thing ever, but yahoo is killing it in 3 months so I will have to learn PHP then!
posted by cacofonie at 7:26 PM on July 14, 2015