Configuring Twitter data sources

Create a data source to receive live data directly from a Twitter feed. The tweet data items can be displayed on the map, list, or calendar in the Operations view.

Before you begin

To configure a Twitter data source, you need the consumer key and secret key for a Twitter application. To generate consumer and secret keys for a Twitter application, complete the following steps:

  1. If you do not have a user account on Twitter, create one at https://apps.twitter.com.
  2. Log on to Twitter and create an application. For more information, see https://apps.twitter.com.
  3. Click the Settings tab for the application and verify that the Allow this application to be used to Sign in with Twitter check box is selected.
  4. Click the Keys and Access Tokens tab and note the values in the Consumer Key (API Key) and Consumer Secret (API Secret) fields.

About this task

For more information about the Twitter API service that is used by the data source, see Twitter API Reference.

Procedure

  1. Create a data source that has a data source definition type of From a third-party source with predefined property mapping.
  2. For the acquisition method, select Twitter API.
  3. Select Point in the Geometry format field.
  4. For the connection information, use the values for the consumer and secret keys that you noted from the Twitter application.
    1. In the Twitter API Key field, enter the value from the Twitter application's Consumer Key (API Key) field.
    2. In the Twitter API Secret field, enter the value from the Twitter application's Consumer Secret (API Secret) field.
  5. Optional: Configure the settings on the Security tab according to your requirements.

Results

When the Twitter data source is created, the settings on the Appearance tab are automatically configured with the appropriate Twitter icon, styles, and style rules.

What to do next

  • Use the filter configuration tool to add your data source to a pane in the filter so that you can view data items from the data source in the Operations view. In the filter, use the More Filters window to filter tweet data according to extra criteria.
  • A number of system properties are provided for Twitter data sources. To change the default values for any of these system properties, complete the following procedure.