Anders Hesselbom

Checking a twitter feed using PowerShell

2010-10-03

To check a twitter feed using PowerShell, you must have an URL to an XML feed (probably RSS). Open the web site of the account you’re interested in (http://www.twitter.com/username/) and find the RSS link. Mine is http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/33177615.rss.

You can load the URL into a variable like so:

$url="http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/33177615.rss"

Then, the Net assembly must be loaded. Use the Load function of the System.Reflection.Assembly class (without inserting any Enter strokes).

[System.Reflection.Assembly]::Load("System.Net, 
Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a")

If you’re not sure about public key token or version, check you assembly folder in your Windows installation folder. Next, you create a web client from the assembly that you just loaded.

$wcli=New-Object System.Net.WebClient

Use the OpenRead function of the web client to acquire a web stream.

$s=$wcli.OpenRead($url)

Use the stream object to create a stream reader.

$r=New-Object System.IO.StreamReader($s)

To save the result stream data in a variable, call the ReadToEnd function of the reader. You then have to close the reader and destroy the web client.

$response=$r.ReadToEnd()
$r.Close()
$wcli.Dispose()

You can just type the name of the variable to see its content.

$response

You should now see my twitter feed!

Categories: PowerShell

Tags: PowerShell

One response to “Checking a twitter feed using PowerShell”

1. Tweets that mention Checking a twitter feed using PowerShell | WinSoft.se -- Topsy.com says:

   2010-10-03 at 20:38

   […] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Anders Hesselbom, Sean Kearney. Sean Kearney said: RT @ahesselbom: New blog post: Checking a twitter feed using PowerShell http://bit.ly/anWdF0 […]