Using TwitterAPI from Unity Web Player

This blog is a translation of this entry that written by my student.
http://d.hatena.ne.jp/anchan828/20110821

There's a crossdomain limitation to post a tweet from UnityWebPlayer.

Here, we used some detour for this.
The main idea is calling javascript function from Unity and using OAuth2.0 to POST.
We used @Anywhere to implement this.

1. Preparation

Register your application to Twitter dev(https://dev.twitter.com/).
After you finish registration, move to @Anywhere Domains in the settings section for the application and register your domain name.

ex. unity-games.appspot.com for UnityGames(http://unity-games.appspot.com/)

That's all for setting up your application.

Then, insert the line into the webpage where you want to put your UnityWebPlayer.

<script src="http://platform.twitter.com/anywhere.js?id=Consumer key for your Twitter App&v=1">

Now, you are ready to use @AnyWhere

2. Implement javascript function in the webpage.

The functions you need are Authorization and POST.
Authorization function is here.

function connect(){



	var url = "https://oauth.twitter.com/2/authorize?oauth_callback_url="

　　　　　　//the call back should be the webpage address where your Unity Web Player is.

		+ encodeURIComponent(location.href)

		+ "&oauth_mode=flow_web_client&oauth_client_identifier=Consumer Key for your Twitter App";

	var F = 0;

	if (screen.height > 500) {

		F = Math.round((screen.height / 2) - (250))

	}

　　// The window option is a default for @AnyWhere

	window.open(url, "twitter_anywhere_auth", "left=" + Math.round((screen.width / 2) - (250)) + ",top=" + F

			+ ",width=500,height=500"

			+ ",personalbar=no,toolbar=no,resizable=no,scrollbars=yes");

}

Next, post function using ajax will be like this. (The function is using JQuery(http://jquery.com))

//url will be something like "https://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/update.json". You must url encode the parameters.

function post(url) {

       $.ajax({

           type: "post",

　　　　 //The access token for twitter can be load with localStorage.getItem("twttr_anywhere")

           url: url+ "&oauth_access_token="+encodeURIComponent(localStorage.getItem("twttr_anywhere")),

           success: function (e) {

          	// write whatever you want to do.

           }

       });

}

Mind that you should use HTTPS protocol here.
You must always give "oauth_access_token=取得したAccess_Token" as a parameter for posting to Twitter.

3. Implementation in Unity.

It's easy to call javascript function in the webpage from Unity.
You can use,
Application.ExternalCall (http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/ScriptReference/Application.ExternalCall.html)

First, authorize your self. If you call the function, a popup window will be shown.

Application.ExternalCall ("connect");

Next, POST your tweet.

//URL encode your twee (http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/ScriptReference/WWW.EscapeURL.html)

Application.ExternalCall ("post", "https://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/update.json?status=" + WWW.EscapeURL (tweet));

Now, you can tweet from your Unity Web Player!
You can try the working example here ->（Let’s Twitter In UnityWebPlayer）

Head to "Sojo University Unity3D Competition"

In our university, 3rd grade students are studying game development using Unity3D in the lecture called "Animation Study". Students are required to plan and create their original 3D/2D game with Unity3D. For most students, game development is a first trial (some of them did not even make any 3D models before). They studied Blender and Unity3D, that I introduced in the lecture. Also, some students studied Metasequoia or Google Sketchup to emphasize their work. Finally, their works are forming into a game.

The evaluation of their games is done by public voting on the Web. If they get many votes, they will get a good mark!

I am building the voting system with Slim3 and AppEngine/J. They are really powerful!



You will be able to vote with Google and Mixi OpenID. Also you can use Twitter authentication.
Something like "Like" from Facebook will be supported as well.

It will start on 26th of January, if there is no problem. We hope that many people get interested in the trial. We will post the link for our voting system on the blog later.

Please vote for their games!