Use the Twitter Search API without the OAuth Library

Google doesn’t recommend using script libraries inside add-ons based Apps script projects as they tend to impact performance. This snippet shows how to use the Twitter Search API inside Google Apps Script without including the OAuth library.

Create a new Twitter app, get the Consumer Key and Secret and you will be able to perform most Twitter API functions from within Google Apps Script.

function testTwitterConnection() {
  var twitterKeys = {
    TWITTER_CONSUMER_KEY: 'iqoWfLEG1Q4eMGptxiEzb83Da',
    TWITTER_CONSUMER_SECRET: 'g6EJijC9Nsrc2D6WazXjF353FNATZzCvtCoigtBoUMfCQeW0L',
  };

  setupTwitter(twitterKeys);
  searchTwitter('ctrlq');
}

function setupTwitter(twitterKeys) {
  // URL encode the consumer key and the consumer secret according to RFC 1738
  var encodedConsumerKey = encodeURIComponent(twitterKeys.TWITTER_CONSUMER_KEY);
  var encodedConsumerSecret = encodeURIComponent(twitterKeys.TWITTER_CONSUMER_SECRET);

  // Concatenate the encoded consumer key, a colon character “:”, and the encoded consumer secret into a single string.
  // Base64 encode the string from the previous step.
  var base64EncodedBearerToken = Utilities.base64Encode(encodedConsumerKey + ':' + encodedConsumerSecret);

  // Step 2: Obtain a bearer token

  // The request must be a HTTP POST request.
  // The request must include an Authorization header with the value of Basic .
  // The request must include a Content-Type header with the value of application/x-www-form-urlencoded;charset=UTF-8.
  // The body of the request must be grant_type=client_credentials.

  var bearer_url = 'https://api.twitter.com/oauth2/token';
  var options = {
    method: 'POST',
    headers: {
      Authorization: 'Basic ' + base64EncodedBearerToken,
      'Content-Type': 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded;charset=UTF-8',
    },
    payload: {
      grant_type: 'client_credentials',
    },
  };

  var response = UrlFetchApp.fetch(bearer_url, options);
  var data = JSON.parse(response.getContentText());

  // Store the Access Token
  if (data.access_token) {
    PropertiesService.getScriptProperties().setProperty('TWITTER_ACCESS_TOKEN', data.access_token);
  }

  return data.access_token;
}

function searchTwitter(query) {
  var access_token = PropertiesService.getScriptProperties().getProperty('TWITTER_ACCESS_TOKEN');

  if (access_token === null) {
    Logger.log('Run Twitter setup again');
    return;
  }

  var base_url = 'https://api.twitter.com/1.1/search/tweets.json';
  var search_url = base_url + '?q=' + encodeURIComponent(query);

  var options = {
    method: 'GET',
    headers: {
      Authorization: 'Bearer ' + access_token,
      'Content-Type': 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded;charset=UTF-8',
      'Accept-Encoding': 'gzip',
    },
    followRedirects: true,
    muteHttpExceptions: true,
  };

  var response = UrlFetchApp.fetch(search_url, options);
  var data = JSON.parse(response.getContentText());
  var tweets = data.statuses;

  // Output the tweets in the log
  // They can also be saved in a Google Spreadsheet

  for (var t = 0; t < tweets.length; t++) {
    Logger.log('%s wrote: %s', tweets[t].user.name, tweets[t].text);
  }
}
Amit Agarwal

Amit Agarwal

Google Developer Expert, Google Cloud Champion

Amit Agarwal is a Google Developer Expert in Google Workspace and Google Apps Script. He holds an engineering degree in Computer Science (I.I.T.) and is the first professional blogger in India.

Amit has developed several popular Google add-ons including Mail Merge for Gmail and Document Studio. Read more on Lifehacker and YourStory

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