How to Edit Twitter Feeds with the Twitter API

Despite all the recent trials and tribulations, Twitter remains a powerful social media platform with an active and engaged user base. It is an important tool for marketers, researchers, influencers, and businesses to engage with their audience. A popular way to share a story or detailed information on Twitter is “Twitter Threads” – a series of linked reply tweets that allow you to exceed the Tweet limit of 280 characters – using the Twitter API to post on behalf of your users.

There are several tools available for editing individual tweets or you can directly use the Twitter API. However, organizing Twitter Threads, formerly known as Tweetstorms, requires more finesse and coding. This article will provide a step-by-step guide on how to edit Twitter threads using Twitter’s API.

What is required

There are a few steps you need to take before sending your Tweet threads through the API:

1. The developer’s Twitter account: This is required to access the Twitter API. Apply for one at Twitter developer dashboard. There are several plan options, from Basic (free) to Enterprise (viewing at $42,000 USD per month). You can sign up for the Basic plan.
2. Twitter App: Create a new application in your Twitter Developer account to generate your API keys (API key & secret, Bearer Token). This will be used to authenticate the application.
3. Node.js Environment: Node.js is required to run your JavaScript code. Of course you can use any language like Python or PHP, but our examples will be in JavaScript.

Step 1: Setting Up Your Node.js Environment

You can use the default fetch function available on Node 18 or higher or install the node-fetch the parcel. This node-fetch module sends HTTP requests, providing a download API for Node.js.

If you use node-fetch:

npm install node-fetch

After installation, import the package:

const fetch = require('node-fetch');

Otherwise if you are using Node 18+, just call fetch work.

Step 2: Creating a Twitter Thread

Creating a Twitter thread involves sending a series of tweets, each one responding to the previous one. Here’s how you can do this:

const createThread = async (bearerToken, tweetTexts, index = 0, lastTweetID = null) => {
  if(index 

I createThread the function takes a Bearer Token (bearerToken), an array of tweet scripts (tweetTexts), and optionally the index and ID of the last tweet. It sends each tweet as a reply to the previous one until it sends all the tweets in the thread.

Step 3: Editing a Twitter Thread

The Twitter API does not directly support editing tweets. We will create our programming function using the setTimeout() function to delay code execution. Here’s how to edit a thread:

const scheduleThread = (bearerToken, tweetTexts, delayInMilliseconds) => {
  setTimeout(() => createThread(bearerToken, tweetTexts), delayInMilliseconds);
}

I scheduleThread the function takes a Bearer Token, an array of tweets, and a delay in milliseconds. Waits for the specified delay, then sends the thread.

To schedule a thread to be posted in one hour, use it like this:

scheduleThread('your-bearer-token', ["Tweet 1", "Tweet 2", "Tweet 3"], 3600000);

Ayrshare Social Media API

As an alternative to starting your own or paying for Twitter to get API access is to use our public API.

You can send Twitter threads by making a simple POST call:

POST 
{
    "post": "Long tweet text above 280 characters..."
    "twitterOptions": {
        "thread": true,        // required for Thread
        "threadNumber": true,  // optional to add numbers to each thread 
        "mediaUrls": [" " ...]  // optional one media object is added to a thread in order
    }
}

The API will automatically split the Tweet into threads, add thread numbers, and add images or videos to each thread.

And if you want to schedule a post for a future date, just add scheduleDate a field with a date.

You can check more details here.

The conclusion

This guide showed how to program Twitter threads using the Twitter API in a Node.js environment, making direct HTTP requests using it. fetch or node-fetch. Although this includes coding, it gives you full control over the timing and content of your Twitter thread.

Remember, in order for your tweets to be scheduled for future days or times, your script needs to run on the server. For more advanced scheduling, consider using a task scheduling library or service like AWS Lambda or using Ayrshare’s API to handle everything.

Remember to adhere to Twitter’s Automation Rules and Best Practices when using their automation API.