Our API will support pushing messages to users in the form of an @reply or DM currently, but we do intend on adding a broadcast type push that will update your bots status as your looking to do. We’ll let you know when that’s in place.

I think a push type of interaction might best be handled by the Twitter API itself - http://apiwiki.twitter.com/Twitter-API-Documentation. Probably no need for IMified for this part.

As you get the bill status changes, they can be added to the @opensenate Twitter account (or the account of your choice) via a simple status update API call. Anyone following @opensenate would see the updated bill status. Additionally, you could add #hashtags to make it easier for followers and others to pick out the ones of importance to them (e.g., #s21 status changed to xxx).

I had thought about adding a permalink to the bill in the @opensenate Tweets, and plan on doing so shortly. I will probably want to make a call to a URL shortening service, to reduce the number of characters to the bill permalink, before adding it to the Tweet. I’ve used the cli.gs API (http://cli.gs/#api) for this in the past. Probably won’t be able to do it until this weekend though - we’re at the end of a sprint at my day job and we’re closing out the last few items before sprint review.

I’ve done both of the above (invoking the Twitter API to update status, and shortening a URL for posting in a Tweet) on previous projects. You may notice that the code sample I include in the post has a base class for REST-based API invocations.

This base class can be easily extended to do both of the above. Makes it really easy to add new functionality to the NY Senate bot!

I’ll post back here and hit you up with a @reply when I’ve had a chance to add the permalink to the @opensenate Tweets.

What are your thoughts on just using the Twitter API to crank out status updates when the status of the bills change?

http://open.nysenate.gov/openleg/api/html/bill/Sxxxx etc

Nice work on the Twitter support. I am working on something along those lines, but perhaps you can add it… i want to post all bill actions out to a Twitter account as they happen (or as we get them each hour). Can IMified handle a “push” type of feed as opposed to a query?

I’d like to work on a voice-enabled telephone app in the near future, and perhaps develop more formal collections of class libraries for interacting with the API (PHP and C#).

I’m inspired by what you guys are doing — can’t wait to see what you guys have planned next!

Thanks for building this AWESOME bot. You are officially the first external API user. That deserves some sort of prize!

If you run into any problems testing this app, bear in mind that the API is still in Beta.