Passing a string through a URL via JavaScript.

Question

Hello,

I am trying to interact with Twitter via JavaScript. I want to pass a pre-set message to a user's Twitter status page when they click a link. In an attempt to do this, I have a link defined as follows:

<a href="#" onclick="updateTwitterStatus();">Update Status</a>

<script type="text/javascript">
  function updateTwitterStatus() {
    var message = "This is a status update";
    var url = "http://www.twitter.com/home?status=" + escape(message);
    window.open(url, "_blank");
  }
</script>

When I execute this code, I get an encoded message. That shows up like this: This%20is%20a%20status%20update

I have tried decodeUriComponent and encodeUriComponent, but nothing seems to be working. What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

The issue is not with the encoding, that is fine. Twitter wants a "+" instead of "%20" for some strange and non standard compliant reason.

Twitter does not allow posting to the status page this way. And this decision makes sense: After logging into twitter, you surely don't want to give any website you visit the possibility to spam your feed.

You might want to have a look at http://dev.twitter.com/pages/libraries#javascript

Answer 2

Have you thought using the twitter api? http://apiwiki.twitter.com/Twitter-API-Documentation