How do you automate Twitter?

Question About Using Python to Post to Twitter

• What is the easiest way to automate a daily twitter status update with an image? The project is a twitter account that is counting down to a future event.I am working to create a daily update for my twitter account using python. Right now I'm running it off my computer, but the eventual goal is to host it online somewhere virtually. I was able to set up a daily update using http://www.tweepy.org/ and http://www.dototot.com/how-to-write-a-twitter-bot-with-python-and-tweepy/, which posts an update to the twitter account from each successive line in a text document. The https://github.com/andyratto/Twitter-election-countdown/blob/master/TwitterPythonFromFile, for text only. I couldn't figure out if Tweepy can also post an image along with the text update. Is there an easy way to attach an image that corresponds to each line/message in the text file? I was able to set up a status update with an image using https://twython.readthedocs.org/en/latest/, and http://twigstechtips.blogspot.com/2013/09/pythontwitter-posting-tweets-with-images.html. The https://github.com/andyratto/Twitter-election-countdown/blob/master/TwitterPythonwithImage, for a status update with an image. Is there a way that I can use this code but set up a list of status message and corresponding images that could be posted on a daily basis? I'm basically trying to combine the two different twitter python projects that I have working. One project can post once a day with a successive line from a text file, which can be used to do a text countdown in my twitter account. But I'm not sure how to add an image in. The other project sends a status update with an image, but I'm not sure how to go about automating it so that it can do the daily update as part of a countdown. What would be the next step, in terms of setting up a python script that will update my twitter account once a day with a text status and image for my daily countdown? Thanks!

• Answer:

  The easiest way is probably something like https://ifttt.com/recipes/search?q=daily+tweet&ac=false. If you want to keep going the Python way, you can schedule tasks with https://help.ubuntu.com/community/CronHowto. And you would probably have to modify your text file to come up with some way to specify image URLs and have the Python parse that out. For example, delimiting them with some special character like pipe | and then splitting the line on that character.