Send SMS via Twitter with JAVA application

Send SMS via Twitter step by step

Almost all the server monitoring systems has the "Health Check" functionality. Using that, we able to monitor the CPU performance, memory usage.. etc. If any of the server performances are reach the predefined threshold value, the system send the email or SMS alert to configured users.

In this tutorial, you can learn that, how to send the SMS message with using twitter via Java application. In additionally you can also learn how to register the application in twitter and what are the limitations if we use the twitter for send SMS.

Objective : The main Objective of the tutorial is that, register the application in twitter and develop a Java application for send SMS. 

Scope : Develop a simple Java application for send SMS via twitter.

Requirements : The following basic requirement we need to set it up in order to achieve the objective.

• Eclipse JAVA EE IDE
• JDK 1.6
• Twitter related jars

Step 1 : You have to create an Twitter account and need to register the application with twitter. The registration details explained here. Once the registration is completed, the registered account will be use to send the messages to clients.

Step 2 : Once the registration process completed you able to get the following tokens\keys from the twitter page. Please note that the tokens and keys are very important, so save those details to some secure place. 

Do not share the key/tokens to public, because using that, any once can send the messages through your registered application.

Step 3 : Create a java project in Eclipse and name it as "TweetMsg". Add the following jars to build path of the project.

• twitter4j-async-3.0.5.jar
• twitter4j-core-3.0.5.jar
• twitter4j-media-support-3.0.5.jar
• twitter4j-stream-3.0.5.jar 

Step 4 : Create a java class "TweetMessage" in package "com.prem.twitter.message". The following TweetMessage class used to send the message to twitter account with using the token/keys.

/TweetMsg/src/com/prem/twitter/message/TweetMessage.java

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package com.prem.twitter.message; import java.io.IOException; import java.util.logging.Logger; import twitter4j.Twitter; import twitter4j.TwitterException; import twitter4j.TwitterFactory; import twitter4j.auth.AccessToken; import twitter4j.auth.RequestToken; public class TweetMessage { private final Logger logger = Logger.getLogger(TweetMessage.class .getName()); public void start(String message) throws TwitterException, IOException { Twitter twitter = new TwitterFactory().getInstance(); try { RequestToken requestToken = twitter.getOAuthRequestToken(); AccessToken accessToken = null; while (null == accessToken) { logger.fine("Open the following URL and grant access to your account:"); logger.fine(requestToken.getAuthorizationURL()); try { accessToken = twitter.getOAuthAccessToken(requestToken); } catch (TwitterException te) { if (401 == te.getStatusCode()) { logger.severe("Unable to get the access token."); } else { te.printStackTrace(); } } } logger.info("Got access token."); logger.info("Access token: " + accessToken.getToken()); logger.info("Access token secret: " + accessToken.getTokenSecret()); } catch (IllegalStateException ie) { // access token is already available, or consumer key/secret is not // set. if (!twitter.getAuthorization().isEnabled()) { logger.severe("OAuth consumer key/secret is not set."); return; } } twitter.updateStatus(message); } public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception { String tweetMsg = ""; for (String string : args) { tweetMsg = tweetMsg + string + " "; } new TweetMessage().start(tweetMsg); } }

Please note that, you can not send the same tweet message twice to the twitter account.

Step 5 : Store the tokens and keys in to "twitter4j.properties" file. Using the properties the class mentioned in Step 4 send the message to twitter account.

/TweetMsg/twitter4j.properties

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oauth.consumerSecret=elVY6ILJJTdTDnJkTdFkClzlbRsTg7jZFxDENTqOE debug=true oauth.accessToken=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx oauth.accessTokenSecret=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http.prettyDebug=true oauth.consumerKey=s1FBhBmAinYYKkX8SDHw

Step 6 : Now the time to configure the message receive option in twitter account. Once enabled the SMS notification, then only the users able to receive the SMS from twitter. You can find here for enable the SMS notification explained in the twitter site.

Step 7 : Now the time to run the "TweetMessage" class with parameters. You can find here for how to run the application with input parameters. In our example the input parameter is the string message. 

For example if you run the class with the text "Hello World" as the input parameter, then the same text message send to clients twitter account and if the twitter account enabled as SMS notification, then the same text will receive as SMS to the client mobile also.

E.E: 
- Make it sure the firewall is enable for access the twitter site.

Limitations : 
The Twitter has a set of limitations for sending SMS. You able to find the SMS limitations defined by twitter here.