Nicholas Pike

There’s all sorts of automated twitter posting now adays - you see it a lot for “new blog posts”, but not once have I seen a Twitter/Last.FM post.

For some reason I wrote this last night (even though there is no free time in my schedule at all lately) - as a quick exercise in using Ruby.

Once the script is run, it will suck down my Last.FM recently loved feed every 5 minutes - if the last song loved has changed, then it posts the name of the song, and the Last.FM url to my Twitter account (so that folks can listen to the song too)

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
# @author:  Nicholas Pike - npike@npike.net
require 'net/http'
require 'rexml/document'

# Twitter account information
TW_USER = 'twitterusername'
TW_PASS = 'twitterpassowrd'
# Last.fm username
LF_USER = "lastfmuseraname"

# DO NOT CHANGE BELOW THIS
TW_URL  = 'http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml'
LAST_FM_URL = "http://ws.audioscrobbler.com/1.0/user/#{LF_USER}/recentlovedtracks.xml"

# temp variables
last_url = ""
first_run = 1

def postToTwitter(message)
  begin
    url = URI.parse(TW_URL)
    req = Net::HTTP::Post.new(url.path)
    req.basic_auth TW_USER, TW_PASS
    req.set_form_data({'status' => message})
    begin
      res = Net::HTTP.new(url.host, url.port).start {|http| http.request(req) }
      case res
        when Net::HTTPSuccess, Net::HTTPRedirection
          if res.body.empty?
            puts "Twitter is not responding properly"

          else
            puts 'Twitter update succeeded'

          end
        else
          puts 'Twitter update failed for an unknown reason'
          # res.error!

        end
    rescue
      puts $!
      #puts "Twitter update failed - check username/password"

    end
  rescue SocketError
    puts "Twitter is currently unavailable"

  end
end

while true

# get the XML data as a string
xml_data = Net::HTTP.get_response(URI.parse(LAST_FM_URL)).body
doc = REXML::Document.new(xml_data)

if ( doc.elements["recentlovedtracks/track[1]/url”].text != last_url)
   puts “No match”

   last_url = doc.elements["recentlovedtracks/track[1]/url”].text
   last_artist = doc.elements["recentlovedtracks/track[1]/artist”].text
   last_name = doc.elements["recentlovedtracks/track[1]/name”].text 

   message = “Last.FM: #{last_name} - #{last_artist}\n\n#{last_url}”

  # Dont send a twitter message on first run of script
   if (first_run != 1)
     postToTwitter(message)
   end
   first_run = 0
else
  puts “No change”
end
sleep 200
end