traceTweetLinks.sh

traceTweetLinks.sh

#!/bin/bash
# Recursively follows the first link in a tweet until it reaches the bottom 'root' tweet. 
# Built without any testing to trace the origin of this meme: https://twitter.com/sufw/status/433495556300603393
# Published at https://gist.github.com/sufw/8952129

i=0;
startingTweet=$1;

if [ "$#" -ne 1 ]
then
  echo "Usage: " 1>&2;
  echo "    Please call this script with the URL of a tweet as an argument" 1>&2;
  echo "    e.g. $0 https://twitter.com/sufw/status/433495556300603393" 1>&2;
  echo " " 1>&2;
  exit 1;
fi

while [ $i -lt 1024 ]; do
	nextTweet=$(curl $startingTweet 2>/dev/null | grep -o -e 'class="js-tweet-text tweet-text".*' | head -1 | grep -o -e 'data-expanded-url="[^"]*"' | head -1 | sed 's/data-expanded-url=//' | sed 's/"//g');

	if [[ "$nextTweet" != "$startingTweet" ]]; then
		echo "$i: $startingTweet --> $nextTweet";
		startingTweet="$nextTweet";
		let i=i+1;
	else
		break;
	fi
done