Siebel - Twitter Integration - Part 1: Authentication

This is post is second in series of Siebel Twitter Integration and will talk about logging in to twitter as an application.

Twitter has support two form of authentication, O-Auth Authentication and Application only authentication. For pulling tweets in Siebel we need Application only authentication, luckily which is technically easier than O-Auth and have more generous rate limits.






Before starting with Siebel configuration follow these steps:

1. Create account on http://dev.twitter.com by agreeing to terms and conditions.
2. Request to create your access token, and copy your Consumer Key and Consumer Secret.

Now copy paste following code to your repository, I prefer client side scripting as it easy to change.

StringToBase64 encoder

http://www.siebel-tech.com/2013/07/escript-base64-encoder/
This is piece of code is required for encoding the Client Key and Client Secret to Base64 before sending it to twitter. Developers at siebel-tech.com has done wonderful work in converting String to Base64, which saved me lot of time. Thanks Iain.

function StringToBase64(Inputs, Outputs)
{
  // *************************************************************************
  // Purpose: Encodes to a Base64 string
  // Author: Iain Ollerenshaw
  // Date: 30-Jul-2013
  //
  // Inputs: InString - string to be encoded
  // Outputs: Base64String - string in Base64
  //
  // Modification History
  //
  // Date          By                Details
  // 25-Jul-2013   Iain Ollerenshaw   Created
  // 2-Feb-2014    Jim  Updated
  // **************************************************************************

  try
  {

    // Define the Base64 codex
    var sCodex = "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789+/=";
    var sOutput = "";
    var sInput = Inputs.GetProperty("InString");
    var iLen = sInput.length;
    // Parse input string
    var iPos = 0;
    while (iPos < iLen)
    {
      var sChr1 = sInput.charCodeAt(iPos);
      iPos++;
      var sChr2 = sInput.charCodeAt(iPos);
      iPos++;
      var sChr3 = sInput.charCodeAt(iPos);
      // Shift bytes
      var iEnc1 = sChr1 >> 2;
      var iEnc2 = ((sChr1 & 3) << 4) | (sChr2 >> 4);
      var iEnc3 = ((sChr2 & 15) << 2) | (sChr3 >> 6);
      var iEnc4 = sChr3 & 63;
      if (isNaN(sChr2))
      {
        iEnc3 = iEnc4 = 64;
      }
      else if (isNaN(sChr3))
      {
        iEnc4 = 64;
      }
      sOutput +=(sCodex.charAt(iEnc1) + sCodex.charAt(iEnc2)+ sCodex.charAt(iEnc3) + sCodex.charAt(iEnc4));
      iPos++;
    }
    Outputs.SetProperty("Base64String", sOutput);  }
  catch(e)
  {    throw(e);  }
}

Get Description / Set Description

This is a small piece of code which helps to get the description of any LOV value, I have used LOV as scratch pad to store access token in this example, I will explain to store an maintain these in custom Twitter dashboard. I thought of saving them in system preferences first, but it only has 100 char limit thus had to switch over to LOV Description column.

function GetDescription (sType,sName)
{
var boListOfVal = TheApplication().GetBusObject("List Of Values");
var bcListOfVal = boListOfVal.GetBusComp("List Of Values");
bcListOfVal.ClearToQuery();   
bcListOfVal.ActivateField("Description");
bcListOfVal.SetSearchSpec("Name",sName);
bcListOfVal.SetSearchSpec("Type",sType);
bcListOfVal.ExecuteQuery();
if(bcListOfVal.FirstRecord()){
return(bcListOfVal.GetFieldValue("Description"));
}else return("none");
}

function SetDescription (sType,sName,sDesc)
{
var boListOfVal = TheApplication().GetBusObject("List Of Values");
var bcListOfVal = boListOfVal.GetBusComp("List Of Values");
bcListOfVal.ClearToQuery();   
bcListOfVal.ActivateField("Description");
bcListOfVal.SetSearchSpec("Name",sName);
bcListOfVal.SetSearchSpec("Type",sType);
bcListOfVal.ExecuteQuery();
if(bcListOfVal.FirstRecord()){
bcListOfVal.SetFieldValue("Description",sDesc);
bcListOfVal.WriteRecord();
}
}

LOVs look like:

Main code for Twitter login is as follows:

//Get Consumer Key and consumer Secret from LOV Description
var sConsumerKey = GetDescription("TWITTER_TOKEN","ConsumerKey");
var sConsumerSecret = GetDescription("TWITTER_TOKEN","ConsumerSecret");

//Encode Key and Secret into Base64
var inp = TheApplication().NewPropertySet();
var op = TheApplication().NewPropertySet();
inp.SetProperty("InString",sConsumerKey + ":" + sConsumerSecret);
StringToBase64(inp,op);


//Use EAI HTTP Transport to call Twitter API to login.
var httpSvc= TheApplication().GetService("EAI HTTP Transport");
var httpIn = TheApplication().NewPropertySet();
httpIn.SetProperty("HTTPRequestURLTemplate","https://api.twitter.com/oauth2/token?grant_type=client_credentials");
httpIn.SetProperty("HTTPRequestMethod","POST");
httpIn.SetProperty("HTTPIsSecureConn","TRUE");
httpIn.SetProperty("HTTPContentType","application/x-www-form-urlencoded;charset=UTF-8");
httpIn.SetProperty("HDR.Authorization","Basic " + op.GetProperty("Base64String"));
httpIn.SetProperty("HDR.Accept-Encoding","identity");
httpIn.SetProperty("HDR.User-Agent","something");
httpSvc.InvokeMethod("SendReceive", httpIn, Outputs);


//Transcode the JSON response into UTF-8
var oTransService = TheApplication().GetService("Transcode Service");
var oTransOutputs = TheApplication().NewPropertySet();
Outputs.SetProperty("ConversionMode", "EncodingToString");
Outputs.SetProperty("TargetEncoding", "UTF-16");
Outputs.SetProperty("SourceEncoding", "UTF-8");
oTransService.InvokeMethod("Convert", Outputs, oTransOutputs);
var sResponse = oTransOutputs.GetValue();


//Convert the JSON response to property set
var oJSONConverter = TheApplication().GetService("EAI JSON Converter");
oJSONConverter.InvokeMethod("JSONToPropSet",oTransOutputs,Outputs);

//extract access_token and clip
var token = Outputs.GetChild(0).GetProperty("access_token");
token = token.substring(1,token.length-1);


//Save the token for future use
SetDescription("TWITTER_TOKEN","EncodedTokenCredentials",token);

This access token will be used in all the future communications with twitter as authorization code.
Post version: Draft :) keep checking for more updates on explanations over the HTTP transport.