Adding a Twitter Reply via Twitter API

Broken Post? → Let me know

A quick note to self regarding adding a reply on Twitter using Twitter NPM library.

POST statuses/update

POST statuses/update lets one "tweet" a status on Twitter.

But when you want to add a reply the an existing twitter, you can set the in_reply_to_status_id to the tweet ID you want to reply to.

The documentation for [in_reply_to_status_id](https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/tweets/post-and-engage/api-reference/post-statuses-update#parameters) states that

The ID of an existing status that the update is in reply to. Note: This parameter will be ignored unless the author of the Tweet this parameter references is mentioned within the status text. Therefore, you must include @username , where username is the author of the referenced Tweet, within the update.

Even though it says that it should be "mentioned within the status text", but it doesn't sound 100% correct as passing username mentioned in the following sentence was enough to trigger the reply thread.

      
        const Twitter = require('twitter')
      
        const config = {
      
          consumer_key: 'secret',
      
          consumer_secret: 'secret',
      
          access_token_key: 'secret',
      
          access_token_secret: 'secret',
      
        }
      
        const client = new Twitter(config)
      
        // https://github.com/desmondmorris/node-twitter#promises
      
        const update = (status, in_reply_to_status_id = null) =>
      
          client.post('statuses/update', {
      
            status,
      
            in_reply_to_status_id,
      
            username: '@dance2die',
      
          })
      
        update('Testing twitter NPM library')
      
          .then(tweet => {
      
            console.log(`tweet #1 ==>`, tweet)
      
            return update('Reply #1', tweet.id_str)
      
          })
      
          .catch(error => console.log(`error ==>`, error))

view raw twitter.js hosted with ❤ by GitHub

View this gist on GitHub

On line #17, username is passed and that's sufficient to make in_reply_to_status_id not to be ignored by Twitter.

https://mobile.twitter.com/dance2die/status/1155604901558456321

	const Twitter = require('twitter')

	const config = {
	consumer_key: 'secret',
	consumer_secret: 'secret',
	access_token_key: 'secret',
	access_token_secret: 'secret',
	}

	const client = new Twitter(config)

	// https://github.com/desmondmorris/node-twitter#promises
	const update = (status, in_reply_to_status_id = null) =>
	client.post('statuses/update', {
	status,
	in_reply_to_status_id,
	username: '@dance2die',
	})

	update('Testing twitter NPM library')
	.then(tweet => {
	console.log(`tweet #1 ==>`, tweet)
	return update('Reply #1', tweet.id_str)
	})
	.catch(error => console.log(`error ==>`, error))