How to pipe Twitter Data to CSV in PowerShell

The CData Cmdlets Module for Twitter is a standard PowerShell module offering straightforward integration with Twitter. Below, you will find examples of using our Twitter Cmdlets with native PowerShell cmdlets.

Creating a Connection to Your Twitter Data

All tables require authentication. You can connect using your User and Password or OAuth. To authenticate using OAuth, you can use the embedded OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL or you can register an app to obtain your own.

If you intend to communicate with Twitter only as the currently authenticated user, then you can obtain the OAuthAccessToken and OAuthAccessTokenSecret directly by registering an app.

See the Getting Started chapter in the help documentation for a guide to using OAuth.

$conn = Connect-Twitter 

Selecting Data

Follow the steps below to retrieve data from the Tweets table and pipe the result into to a CSV file:

Select-Twitter -Connection $conn -Table Tweets | Select -Property * -ExcludeProperty Connection,Table,Columns | Export-Csv -Path c:\myTweetsData.csv -NoTypeInformation

You will notice that we piped the results from Select-Twitter into a Select-Object cmdlet and excluded some properties before piping them into an Export-Csv cmdlet. We do this because the CData Cmdlets append Connection, Table, and Columns information onto each "row" in the result set, and we do not necessarily want that information in our CSV file.

Deleting Data

The following line deletes any records that match the criteria:

Select-Twitter -Connection $conn -Table Tweets -Where "From_User_Name = twitter" | Remove-Twitter

Inserting and Updating Data

The cmdlets make data transformation easy as well as data cleansing. The following example loads data from a CSV file into Twitter, checking first whether a record already exists and needs to be updated instead of inserted.

Import-Csv -Path C:\MyTweetsUpdates.csv | %{
  $record = Select-Twitter -Connection $Twitter -Table Tweets -Where ("Id = `'"+$_.Id+"`'")
  if($record){
    Update-Twitter -Connection $twitter -Table Tweets -Columns ("From_User_Name","Retweet_Count") -Values ($_.From_User_Name, $_.Retweet_Count) -Where ("Id = `'"+$_.Id+"`'")
  }else{
    Add-Twitter -Connection $twitter -Table Tweets -Columns ("From_User_Name","Retweet_Count") -Values ($_.From_User_Name, $_.Retweet_Count)
  }
}

As always, our goal is to simplify the way you connect to data. With cmdlets users can install a data module, set the connection properties, and start building. Download Cmdlets and start working with your data in PowerShell today!