Twitter exposes its data via an Application Programming Interface (API). This document is the official reference for that functionality.
The concepts every developer should know before interacting with the API.
Stream public statuses in near real-time over a persistent connection. Sampled or filtered by track keyword or by userid.
In addition to the Streaming API, the Twitter API includes the following RESTful methods to send and receive Twitter data.
POST lists (create)
POST lists id (update)
GET lists (index)
GET list id (show)
DELETE list id (destroy)
account/update_delivery_device
account/update_profile_background_image
Saved Searches Methods
OAuth Methods
Trends Methods
Geo methods
Help Methods
Applications send information throught the HTTP response codes and error messages.
API methods return elements of data. These elements contain a known set of fields.
The API is free, but here are the words to code by.