Posting Twitter Thread via Twit w/ Node.js

Question

I'm using Node and the npm Twit module to post tweets to Twitter. It's working....sort of.

I'm able to successfully post a single tweet wihtout any problems. However, when I attempt to post a string of tweets together (like a thread on Twitter) the tweets don't display correctly. Here's the relevant bit of my code.

Essentially, I can post the initial tweet no problem (the "first" argument in the function). I then get that tweet's unique ID (again, no problem) and attempt to loop through an array of strings (the "subsequent" argument) and post replys to that tweet. Here's the code:

const tweet = (first, subsequent) => { 
  bot.post('statuses/update', { status: `${first}` }, (err,data, response) => {
    if (err) {
      console.log(err);
    } else {
      console.log(`${data.text} tweeted!`);

   /// Find the tweet and then subtweet it!
      var options = { screen_name: 'DoDContractBot', count: 1 };
      bot.get('statuses/user_timeline', options , function(err, data) {
        if (err) throw err;

        let tweetId = data[0].id_str;
        for(let i = 1; i < subsequent.length; i++){
          let status = subsequent[i];
          bot.post('statuses/update', { status, in_reply_to_status_id: tweetId }, (err, data, response) => {
            if(err) throw err;
            console.log(`${subsequent[i]} was posted!`);
          })
        }

      });
    }
  });
};

For whatever reason, the tweets aren't showing up under the same thread on Twitter. Here's what it looks like: (there should be two more 'subtweets' here. Those tweets "post" but are separated from the original):

Has anyone else had similar problems with the Twitter API? Any idea how to more gracefully do a thread via Twit? Thanks!

Answer 1

I figured out what to do.

As Andy Piper mentioned, I needed to respond to the specific tweet id, rather than the original tweet id in the thread. So I refactored my code by wrapping the twit module in a promise wrapper, and used a for loop with async/await. Like this:

const Twit = require('twit');
const config = require('./config');
const util = require("util");
const bot = new Twit(config);

// Wrapping my code in a promise wrapper...
let post_promise = require('util').promisify( // Wrap post function w/ promisify to allow for sequential posting.
  (options, data, cb) => bot.post(
    options,
    data,
    (err, ...results) => cb(err, results)
  )
);

// Async/await for the results of the previous post, get the id...
const tweet_crafter = async (array, id) => { 
  for(let i = 1; i < array.length; i++){
    let content = await post_promise('statuses/update', { status: array[i], in_reply_to_status_id: id });
    id = content[0].id_str;
  };
};

const tweet = (first, subsequent) => { 
  post_promise('statuses/update', { status: `${first}` })
    .then((top_tweet) => {
        console.log(`${top_tweet[0].text} tweeted!`);
        let starting_id = top_tweet[0].id_str; // Get top-line tweet ID...
        tweet_crafter(subsequent, starting_id);
    })
    .catch(err => console.log(err));
};

module.exports = tweet;