First name and last name to Twitter handle - twitter

Question

I have a list of people (first and last name) who I want to follow, but I don't want to Google or search them via Twitter separately. What is the best way to get the Twitter handles? Some GitHub repos or tutorials are also fine.

Answer 1

Twitter offers a "User Search" API request.
If you want to search for a user named "Ada Lovelace" you will need to send an OAuth'd request to
https://api.twitter.com/1.1/users/search.json?q=Ada%20Lovelace
You will get back a list of results. There may be many people who share the same first and last name.
As for how to do it, that rather depends on the programming language you want to use.
If you just want a clickable link, use https://twitter.com/search?q=Terence%20Eden

Answer 2

So firstly this question is off-topic but I will try write an answer for you. You could use the twitter api for this but that might be a little overkill if you just want to do this for you.
I made you an API
I made an API just for you using KimonoLabs. You can use this and just make a script that loops through your list and requests this api every time, then return a list of the results. Here is the API endpoint:
https://www.kimonolabs.com/api/duwxgie4?apikey=D6UKiTtKU93kv0YJj8i3kFBAbsIjdSTC&q=PERSON%20NAME
The &q= is the paramater for the person's name. To seperate the first and last name use %20, like so: Robert%20Keus
The documentation for this api is here:
https://www.kimonolabs.com/apis/duwxgie4
Let me know if you need any help,
Luca

Answer 3

Latest answer # 2016
First Solution: I wrote following node.js script. You need access_token and id of pulicly published google doc spreadsheet. For testing purpose I have provided sample spreadsheet's link and its id in following code.
var Twit = require('twit'),
async = require('async');
var T = new Twit({
consumer_key: 'xxxxxxxx',
consumer_secret: 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx',
access_token: 'xxxxxxxxxxx',
access_token_secret: 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx',
timeout_ms: 60*1000 // optional HTTP request timeout to apply to all requests.
});
//https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1n7DxgJTTHZ9w3xwiHokUhXMLkBwpP5c9ZLFmsYFDCic/edit?usp=sharing
var GoogleSpreadsheet = require("google-spreadsheet"),
_ = require('underscore');
var sheetId = req.params.sheet || "1n7DxgJTTHZ9w3xwiHokUhXMLkBwpP5c9ZLFmsYFDCic",
sheet = new GoogleSpreadsheet(sheetId);
async.waterfall([
function (cb) {
sheet.getRows(1, {}, function (err, rows) {
if (err) { res.send(err); return;};
var names = [];
_.each(rows, function (row) {
names.push(row.first + " " + row.last);
});
cb(null, names);
});
},
function (names, callback1) {
async.map(names, function(name, cb){
T.get('users/search', { q: name, page: 1 }, function (err, data, response) {
if(data.length)
cb(null, {screen_name: data[0].screen_name, name:data[0].name});
else
cb(null, {screen_name: "no_data_retrieved", name: name});
});
}, function (err, results) {
callback1(null, results);
});
},
function (users, callback) {
console.log(users); //**YOU GET ALL DESIRED DATA HERE**
}
], function (err, result) {
//handle in memory data
});
Second Solution: Clone node-cheat twitter-screen-names, run npm install and shoot node server, Now get all twitter usernames as json in browser.
Happy Helping!