twitter_birthday

Update the birthday on your Twitter profile so you always get balloons.

When you run this program, it will modify your Twitter profile so the birthday is the current month and day, with the year you specify. Use cron or Task Scheduler to see balloons every day.

Once you change your profile birthday a lot, Twitter's desktop web page will tell you that "You can only change your profile a limited number of times", and once you change it even more, you won't be able to select different values. Luckily, this is a UI-only restriction. This program will continue to work even after Twitter's web UI prevents further birthday updates.

Requirements

• Java ≥ 7
• Maven 3

Installation

git clone https://github.com/Aldaviva/twitter_birthday.git
cd twitter_birthday
mvn package

This creates the executable JAR file ./target/twitter_birthday.jar.

Configuration

In the same directory as twitter_birthday.jar, create a subdirectory named twitter_birthday_conf.

target
│   twitter_birthday.jar
└── twitter_birthday_conf/
    |   config.properties

Inside this new subdirectory, create a new text file named config.properties with these keys and example values.

twitter.authToken=abcdefg
twitter.username=dril
twitter.birthdayVisibility.day=PUBLIC
twitter.birthdayVisibility.year=PUBLIC
birthYear=1984

Configuration values

Change the values in config.properties.

• birthYear: The year you want to appear in your Twitter profile's birthday. Required.

• twitter.authToken: Log in to Twitter with your browser and steal the auth_token cookie. Required.

• twitter.username: Your Twitter handle, without the leading @. Required.

• twitter.birthdayVisibility.day: Who should be able to see your birthday's month and day. Can be one of

  • PUBLIC
  • MY_FOLLOWERS
  • PEOPLE_I_FOLLOW
  • WE_FOLLOW_EACH_OTHER
  • ONLY_ME

  Optional, defaults to WE_FOLLOW_EACH_OTHER if you omit this property.

• twitter.birthdayVisibility.year: Who should be able to see your birthday's year. Same possible values as twitter.birthdayVisibility.day. Optional, default value is ONLY_ME.

• twitter.baseUri: Alternate server URI for accessing Twitter. Optional, defaults to https://twitter.com.

Running

java -jar twitter_birthday.jar

01:15:35.466 [main] INFO  c.a.t.t.auth.TwitterAuthServiceImpl - Starting new Twitter session for user dril
01:15:36.260 [main] INFO  c.a.t.t.s.TwitterBirthdayUpdaterImpl - Updating birthday to January 8, 1984
01:15:36.398 [main] INFO  c.a.t.t.s.TwitterBirthdayUpdaterImpl - Successfully updated birthday on Twitter profile to January 8, 1984