My Projects

Spending Tweets

Spending Tweets was developed during coding challenge for mySociety.org. I was challenged to produce a twitter bot that would respond to queries from users about local government spending in 4 hours or less.

The bot is is written in PHP using the CodeIgniter framework and works by listening for twitter @replies containing a formatted query using the Twitter API.

When a valid query is received, the bot attempts to locate the relevant open data using the API provided by Openly Local. If information is located, a response is sent containing as much information as possible and a Bit.ly link to full details.

Due to a quick build, there were a number of omissions and assumptions including checks to ensure that all the various API's were working and that the Twitter API has remaining credit. A full list of these omissions and assumptions are listed on the Spending Tweets website.