Game Threads and Twitter: DH.N Programming Note

Usually when a blog uses the term “programming note” it’s to say something like “We won’t be updating for the next week while we’re on some awesome vacation that you’re not on.” I’m not doing that, I don’t get to take cool vacations anymore. Instead, I’m talking about the actual programming of DetroitHockey.Net.

Don’t worry, it’s not (too) boring, there’s actually a kinda cool feature involved. I won’t even post any code.

So I’ve had this problem since I started using Twitter regularly that I post my in-game thoughts there instead of in the game threads here. It annoys me, because then I come over here at intermission to post something and all the stuff I’d been saying isn’t there so I can’t reference it.

I decided to build a tool that would pull my Twitter comments over to the game thread so they’re in both places. And as long as I was building it for me, I decided to make it work for anyone.

There are some caveats. One is that we have to have an active game thread here on DH.N. Another is that is has to be between 30 minutes before the game and eight hours after the scheduled start time. The big one is that you have to have your Twitter account linked to your DH.N account (if you don’t have an option to link your Twitter account to your DH.N account in the user menu at the top-right of the page, it’s already linked).

Assuming those qualifications are met, Tweet with hashtag #dhngt (DetroitHockey.Net Game Thread) and whatever you say will be pulled over here as a post within a minute of you saying it. Delete the Tweet and it’s deleted over here as well.

I don’t know if this feature will get much (any?) use but it was fun to code and I’ll be taking advantage of it. I figured I should let the world know the option is out there. Now watch it break when we first try to use it tomorrow night.