#trackr

Description

Project for the Web Technology course in TUGraz. The #trackr app plots tweets for a specific hashtag (and optionally a specific location and date) on a world map to allow users to identify geographical trends in Twitter data.

Git Repo

The source code for this project is available at https://github.com/ofaucoz/trackr.

Setup

• Install Java 1.8 JDK
• Install Eclipse JEE (the latest release)
• Clone the project's Git repo (master branch) into the eclipse workspace
• Setup the build path : add every .jar from /trackr/lib in the Build Path (right click on project => Build Path => Configure Build Path => Libraries => Add external jar)
• Right click on Project => Project Facets => tick Dynamic Web Module
• Setup the server :
  • Go to Help => Eclipse Marketplace => type Jboss and search => install Jboss Tools 4.5.1 Final
  • Download Wildfly 10 and extract the file to a folder
  • Go to Windows => Preferences => Server => Runtime Environment => Add => choose Wildfly 10 => point Home Directory where you extracted the Wildfly file
• Setup the database :
  • Install MySQL Server (we used version 5.7)
  • Setup MySQL : for using the database we used root user with password="password", do the same as it's specified in the files (obviously do not use this for a publicly available implementation, as this is a security risk!)
  • In a bash shell or command prompt:

$ mysql -u root -p

• Enter the password ("password")
• In the mysql prompt, type "CREATE DATABASE trackr;"
• Then type : (this sets up the model in the database)

mysql -u root -p trackr < /trackr/tweetdb.sql

• Create a config.properties file using your own Twitter API key (not on Github for security reasons). It should contain the following entries: consumerKey, consumerSecret, accessToken and accessTokenSecret. Put it at the address /src/ressources/config.properties
• Use the web service :
  • Go to the HashtagServlet
  • Run As => Run on server (on the first run you will need to create one using the Wildfly runtime)
  • Load http://localhost:8080/trackr/ in a browser to use the web app

Character Encoding Issues

Please note: there are currently character encoding issues with emoji and certain other non-Latin Unicode characters in the MySQL DB on Windows. If you encounter a SQLException error when making searches on the server, please uncomment line 242 and replace lines 283 - 289 in src/ressources/TwitterBuilder.java with the following code:

try {
			session.saveOrUpdate(u);
			session.saveOrUpdate(e);
			session.saveOrUpdate(c);
			session.saveOrUpdate(t);
			session.getTransaction().commit();
			session.clear();
			listTweet.add(t);
}
catch(GenericJDBCException exception) {
			System.out.println(exception.getStackTrace());
			session.getTransaction().rollback();
			session.clear();
}

Note that this patch is OS-independent, so will also work if you encounter this error on Linux.

Usage

Requests are intended to be made via the web app UI, but you can also view the raw JSON by a http get request to http://localhost:8080/trackr/search.

Parameters :

• hashtag
• longitude
• latitude
• radius
• date

Example : http://localhost:8080/trackr/search?latitude=47.076668&longitude=15.421371&radius=1mi&hashtag=tugraz Will get the tweets around TU Graz coordinates with a 1 mile radius and tugraz as hashtag.