Twitter Webhooks Integration: 4 Easy Steps

With over 611 million active monthly users, X (formerly Twitter) remains one of the largest social media platforms globally. X enables users to send and read microblogs (tweets) of up to 280 characters.

Integrating X (formerly Twitter) with webhooks can significantly enhance your ability to receive real-time updates. The X webhook integration, powered by X’s (formerly Twitter) Account Activity API, allows you to subscribe to notifications for activities like tweets, mentions, direct messages, and more.

In this article, we’ll guide you through the process of setting up a Twitter webhook (X webhook) and explore how this powerful feature can help you build responsive applications.

Prerequisites

• An active Developer account is required to access the Twitter APIs.
• Working Knowledge of Webhooks.
• Working Knowledge of HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) Requests.

Introduction to X (formerly Twitter)

X (formerly Twitter) is a microblogging social media platform based in the United States. Founded by Jack Dorsey in 2006, X was created to connect people and ideas. Users can communicate their thoughts via tweets, stay updated with trends, and engage in global discussions. Additionally, X allows easy access to multimedia content by simply clicking on tweets that contain links to videos and images from other websites.

Beyond personal use, X is a valuable tool for businesses and marketers to enhance brand awareness and customer engagement. It is also widely used for direct communication between social groups and organizations, especially with the use of hashtags, which allow tweets to be seen by all users following topics marked with the hash (#) sign.

Today, X boasts 611 million active monthly users, making it one of the largest social networks in the world, with millions of tweets shared daily.

Key Features of Twitter

Twitter is one of the popular social networking platforms. It provides numerous features. Some of the key features of Twitter include:

• Twitter Lists: Twitter Lists can be considered an effective marketing tool. This feature allows users to follow a personalized list of authors rather than individual content creators.
• Customized Tweet Alerts: You may set up your Twitter account to send you SMS (Short Message Service) notifications whenever a new tweet is posted. This helps you to track tweets from specific persons or companies.
• Twitter Moments: Twitter Moments allow users to curate different stories across the world onto their timelines to get up-to-date information.
• Auto-Complete: Auto-Complete is a feature in which a list of suggestions appears as the user types. Auto-Complete can help speed up the process of sending a tweet using the @username format.

Introduction to Webhooks

Webhooks are the automated messages delivered from apps to your devices when something within the app interface is triggered. They have a message, or payload, and are delivered to a unique URL (Uniform Resource Locator), which is essentially the app’s phone number or address.

Webhooks are always faster and take less effort on your part than Polling. They’re very similar to SMS notifications. Webhooks uses HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) requests to send data from one endpoint to another. When a condition for a specific event is met, it sends a message to one endpoint and binds it to the URL.

The message is then transmitted to the other endpoints using the GET and POST methods. Later in this article, you will learn about Webhook-based Account Activity API that is extensively used in Twitter.

Introduction to Account Activity API

The Account Activity API is a Webhook-Based API that allows you to send events related to a Twitter user’s account activities in real-time. For example, when a subscriber creates or deletes a Tweet, receives or sends a Direct Message, follows a new user, or likes a post, the Account Activity API sends a JSON event payload.

The Account Activity API differs from Twitter’s REST (Representational State Transfer) and streaming APIs as it uses a combination of REST endpoints and Webhooks for data delivery. It is done in real-time via an HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) request when a specified event occurs on Twitter. Moreover, it also improves the efficiency of a user’s interaction with your app by delivering data as early as possible.

The Account Activity API comes in three versions: Premium Sandbox, Premium Paid, and Enterprise. So, you can easily scale up when you need more accounts for additional functionality.

Steps to Set Up Twitter Webhooks Integration

Now that you have a basic grasp of Twitter and Account Activity API, let’s try to understand the procedure to set up Twitter Webhooks Integration.

Step 1: Create a Twitter App

The first step in setting up Twitter Webhooks API is to create a Twitter app. You can follow the below-mentioned procedure to create a Twitter app:

• Go to apps.twitter.com and sign in with your Twitter account. Then, create a Twitter App by clicking on the Create New App as shown below.

Note: If you’re creating the app for your company, using a corporate Twitter account is recommended.

• On the permissions tab of your app page, enable the Read, Write, and Access direct messages.
• Take note of your app’s Consumer Key (API Key) and Consumer Secret (API Secret) under the Keys and Access Tokens tab as shown below. 

• Generate your app’s Access Token and Access Token Secret on the same tab as shown below.

These Access Tokens will be required to register your Webhook URL (Uniform Resource Locator), where you will receive the Twitter account events.

• Take note of your App ID, which can be found on the developer portal’s Apps tab as shown below. 

This App ID will be required when you apply for Account Activity API access.

Step 2: Obtain the Account Activity API Access

After the first step is completed, you can follow the below-mentioned procedure to obtain the Account Activity API access:

• Log in to your Twitter account and go to the Dev environments page as shown below.

• Navigate to Set up dev environment and then give your environment a name, and also specify your Twitter App ID.

Step 3: Develop Webhook Consumer App

After you have received the Account Activity API access, you can follow the below-mentioned steps to develop, deploy and host the web app:

• Create a web app with a URL. This URL can be used as a Webhook to receive events.
• Register your webhook URL as shown below. After registering the URL, a POST request to the /webhooks.json?url= endpoint will be made.

Note: Make sure that your web app can handle POST requests for incoming events.

• Now, all the account Webhook events will be sent to the URL you specified. You need to make sure that your web app can handle the POST requests for incoming events.
• After the web app is ready, the next step is to add accounts for which you want to receive events.

Step 4: Validate the Twitter Webhooks Integration

After you have successfully set up your Twitter Webhooks Integration, now you can validate the Twitter Webhooks Integration by following the below-mentioned procedures:

• Mark a tweet from one of the Twitter accounts to which your app is subscribed as Favorite to validate the Twitter Webhooks Integration. For each Favorite your subscribers get, you should get a favorite_events via a POST request to your Webhook URL.
• Note that after you’ve added a subscription, it might take up to 10 seconds for the event notification to be sent.

With this, you have successfully set up your Twitter Webhooks Integration. It’s as simple as that.

Key Benefits of Setting Up Twitter Webhooks Integration

Some of the key benefits of setting up Twitter Webhooks Integration include: 

• It uses fewer resources than a streaming API in terms of computational resources. This improves the performance of the integration significantly. 
• It provides real-time updates with great performance. It eliminates the need for making polling requests to an API periodically to see whether new data is available.
• The Integration provides a built-in retry method to re-POST if an activity is not successfully delivered. This minimizes the chances of missed data.
• Twitter to Webhooks Integration is a great option for automated messaging that can be tailored to your specific requirements. You can also change the name and avatar of the Webhooks. As a result, the user has more control and customization options.

Conclusion

In this article, we’ve walked you through the process of setting up Twitter Webhooks Integration, from creating your Twitter app to validating the webhook integration. We’ve also explored the key features and benefits of using the Account Activity API for real-time event notifications. By implementing this integration, you can enhance your applications with seamless, real-time updates.

Additionally, Hevo Data supports Webhooks as a source, making it easier for you to integrate data and streamline your workflows. Sign up for a 14-day free trial and experience the feature-rich Hevo suite firsthand.

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