Is there a way of replying to a particular tweet via SLComposerViewController

Question

Is is possible to reply to a tweet using SLComposerViewController? Has anyone done it before?

Answer 1

Since SLComposeViewController inherits from View Contoller, we need to strip the SLComposeViewcontroller to it UITextView property and fetch its content. Then we pass the gathered info to the Twitter API along with the "in_reply_to_status_id". Easy breezy!! Lemme know if you need help with codes! Spoiler I havent implemented it yet.. but since i was able to retrieve the user input from SLComposerViewController, I assume rest of it will be a piece of cake

Answer 2

okay here we goooo. First we need to generate a SLComposeViewController everytime a reply button is tapped. Once dthe SLComposeViewController is initiated we dig deep into it and search for "send" button and disable associated action called sendButtonTapped:. After stripping the the native action we associate our own custom action to the sendButton.

Heres the Code to do that:

if([SLComposeViewController isAvailableForServiceType:SLServiceTypeTwitter])
                {
                    userTypedTweet = [SLComposeViewController composeViewControllerForServiceType:SLServiceTypeTwitter];
                    [userTypedTweet setInitialText:[NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@",authorName]];
                     sendButton = [self tweetSendButton:userTypedTweet.view];
                    NSLog(@"%@",sendButton);
                    NSArray * actions = [sendButton actionsForTarget:userTypedTweet forControlEvent:UIControlEventTouchUpInside];
                    for (NSString * action in actions)
                     if([action isEqualToString:@"sendButtonTapped:"])
                        [sendButton removeTarget:userTypedTweet action:NSSelectorFromString(action) forControlEvents:UIControlEventTouchUpInside];
                    [sendButton addTarget:self action:@selector(replyToTheTweet) forControlEvents:UIControlEventTouchUpInside];
                    [self presentViewController:userTypedTweet animated:YES completion:^{}];
                }

Now in our Custom Action (replyToTweet in my case): we extract the user input comments. and then pass the whole of those to the Twitter API. Twitter will take care for the rest of it!!

-(void)replyToTheTweet
{
    SingletonClass *myAccount= [SingletonClass sharedobject];
    UITextView * textView = [self tweetTextView:self.userTypedTweet.view];
    NSLog(@"we have the value :%@",textView.text);
    NSMutableDictionary *parameters = [[NSMutableDictionary alloc] init];
        [parameters setObject:[myAccount.currentTweet objectForKey:@"id_str"] forKey:@"in_reply_to_status_id"];
        [parameters setObject:textView.text forKey:@"status"];
    SLRequest *request = [SLRequest requestForServiceType:SLServiceTypeTwitter requestMethod:SLRequestMethodPOST URL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"https://api.twitter.com/1.1/statuses/update.json"] parameters:parameters];
NSLog(@"%@",request.parameters);
   [request performRequestWithHandler:^(NSData *responseData, NSHTTPURLResponse *urlResponse, NSError *error) {
   if (responseData)
        {
            NSError *parseError = nil;
            id json = [NSJSONSerialization JSONObjectWithData:responseData options:0 error:&parseError];
            if (!json)
                NSLog(@"Parse Error: %@", parseError);
            else
            {
                UIAlertView *alertOK = [[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle:@"Successful" message:@"Tweet was succesfully replied to" delegate:self cancelButtonTitle:@"OK" otherButtonTitles:nil];
                dispatch_async(dispatch_get_main_queue(), ^{[alertOK show];});
            }
     }
     else
     {
     NSLog(@"Request Error: %@", [error localizedDescription]);
     }
     }];
    [self.userTypedTweet dismissViewControllerAnimated:YES completion:nil];
}

Code to Strip the UiTextView is :

  - (UITextView *)tweetTextView:(UIView *)view
    {
        for (UIView * subview in view.subviews)
        {
            if ([subview isMemberOfClass:[UITextView class]])
                return (UITextView *)subview;
            UITextView * textView = [self tweetTextView:subview];
            if (textView) return textView;
        }
        return nil;
    }

IMP: Remember to strip down the UIButton of SLComposeViewController as well!!