ActiveXperts Twitter Toolkit Add Twitter capabilities to any Windows or .NET application

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How to use ActiveXperts Twitter Toolkit with Visual Basic

Twitter is a popular social networking service that enables its users to send and read messages called Tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters. They are displayed on the author's profile page.

Twitter users can send and receive tweets through the Twitter website or through compatible applications. Applications that want to send or receive Tweets have the option of using Twitters HTTP based RESTfull API. The ActiveXperts Twitter Toolkit provides a user friendly wrapper around Twitters own HTTP based API.

The ActiveXperts Twitter API supports the following:

  • Post your Tweets on Twitter using your own software
  • Easy browsing through your own Tweets or the Tweets on any other time-line
  • Easy browsing through friends and followers
  • Integrated OAuth (Open Authorization) supports both both Client and Web use cases
  • Authenticate users in only two steps
  • Access all of the functions that are publicly available on the Twittter HTTP interface
  • Proved an interface to send custom, OAuth signed, requests to the Twitter HTTP interface

This tutorial describes how the Twitter Toolkit can be integrated in Visual Basic projects.

Step 1: Download and install the Twitter Toolkit

Download the Twitter Toolkit from the ActiveXperts web site and start the installation. The installation guides you through the installation process.  Download now »

Step 2: Create a new Visual Basic project

Launch 'Microsoft Visual Basic' from the Start menu, and choose 'New' from the 'File Menu'. The 'New Project' dialog appears.

Select 'Standard Exe' and click 'OK':

Visual Basic

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Step 3: Refer to the Twitter Toolkit Library and create the objects

A new Project is created, with a blank form.

First, you must add a reference to Twitter Toolkit in the project to be able to use the object. To do so, choose 'References...' from the 'Project' menu. In the 'References' dialog that pops up, enable the 'Twitter Toolkit 2.2 Type Library' reference as shown in the following picture:

Visual Basic

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Click 'OK' to close the 'References...' dialog.

Then, select the Project form and choose 'View Code' from the context menu:

Visual Basic

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On top of your code, declare the following object:

Public objTwitter As twitter-componentLib.Twitter

Step 4: Create the object

From the Code window, select 'Form'. The Private Sub 'Form_Load()' will be displayed now.

In the 'Form Load' function, create the object in the following way:

Set objTwitter = CreateObject("ActiveXperts.Twitter")

Samples

There are many working samples included with the product. You can also find them on the ActiveXperts FTP site: ftp.activexperts-labs.com/samples/twitter-component

Support Operating Systems

The Twitter Toolkit can be used by any of the following operating systems:

  • Windows XP, x86 (32-bit) and x64 (64-bit)
  • Windows 2003, x86 (32-bit) and x64 (64-bit)
  • Windows 2008, x86 (32-bit) and x64 (64-bit)
  • Windows Vista, x86 (32-bit) and x64 (64-bit)
  • Windows 7, x86 (32-bit) and x64 (64-bit)