connector-x

Posting to X with x-client

Motoko bindings for the X API v2, generated from X's OpenAPI spec. The write path is TweetsApi.createPosts (POST /2/tweets); the request model is TweetCreateRequest.

Backend

A minimal canister that posts a tweet on behalf of a user holding an OAuth 2.0 bearer token (token acquisition/refresh is canister-side — see below). Non- replicated is the default, so you just supply the token; every optional field must be present, and null means "not supplied":

import { createPosts } "mo:x-client/Apis/TweetsApi";
import { type TweetCreateRequest } "mo:x-client/Models/TweetCreateRequest";
import { defaultConfig } "mo:x-client/Config";
 
persistent actor {
  // Post a tweet on behalf of a user holding an OAuth 2.0 bearer token.
  public func postTweet(accessToken : Text, body : Text) : async () {
    let cfg = { defaultConfig with auth = ?#bearer accessToken };
    let req : TweetCreateRequest = {
      text_ = ?body;
      for_super_followers_only = null; poll = null; reply = null;
      reply_settings = null; media = null; geo = null; quote_tweet_id = null;
      nullcast = null; direct_message_deep_link = null; community_id = null;
      card_uri = null; edit_options = null; made_with_ai = null;
      paid_partnership = null; share_with_followers = null;
    };
    ignore await* createPosts(cfg, req);
  };
}

The text field is text_ : ?Text (the trailing underscore avoids the Motoko keyword collision; it serialises to the JSON key "text").

OAuth 2.0 setup — PKCE, no client secret

Every write endpoint (/2/tweets most prominently) needs a per-user OAuth 2.0 bearer token. x-client is built for the PKCE flow, so there is no client secret — only a public Client ID.

1. Visit the X Developer Portal, create a Project (Free tier = 1500 posts/month), and an App.

2. App → Settings → User authentication settings → Edit, toggle OAuth 2.0 on. Type of App: Web App, Automated App or Bot (PKCE). Do not pick Native App or a "Confidential Client" — those force a client-secret flow this client does not emit.

3. Callback URI: your canister's HTTPS endpoint receiving ?code=…, exact string match (e.g. https://<canister-id>.ic0.app/oauth/x/callback).

4. Scopes to request at authorise-time:

   Scope	Why
   tweet.write	Required for createPosts / posting
   tweet.read	Show "connected as @…" in the UI
   users.read	Resolve the authenticated user
   offline.access	Issue a refresh token (access tokens last ~2 h)

5. Save; copy the OAuth 2.0 Client ID (a ~30-char public string). It is not a secret — safe to commit, log, or hard-code.

Deployment models — pick one or support both: a single canister-wide Client ID set once by an admin (default), or per-user Client IDs for multi-tenant apps that shouldn't share rate-limit quota.

Scopes are requested at authorise-time but silently absent from the issued token if unticked — "Insufficient OAuth scope" on createPosts almost always means tweet.write was missing.

Calls are non-replicated by default

Every x-client call is an http_request on the IC. The package ships is_replicated = ?false in defaultConfig: X is side-effecting (posting mutates state) and its rate-limit headers / response timestamps vary per request, so a replicated outcall — every subnet node issuing the request, the IC demanding a bit-identical response, ~13× cycles — would post duplicates and fail consensus. You don't set it yourself; the default is correct. Override with is_replicated = ?true only if you specifically need consensus.

Optional fields: leave them null

x-client strips null-valued optional fields from the outbound JSON (via the serde-core skip_null_fields option), so /2/tweets sees only the fields you set. Construct a TweetCreateRequest with text_ = ?"…" and every other field null (as in the snippet above) and the body validates. Motoko requires all record fields to be present at the value site — the nulls are how you say "not supplied".

Sub-object rules for the non-null optionals

If you set poll, reply, geo, media, or edit_options to ?Some, X enforces that sub-object's own required fields — you cannot send an empty object, so either leave the field null or populate it fully:

• poll — options (≥ 2) and duration_minutes.
• reply — in_reply_to_tweet_id.
• media — media_ids (must be pre-uploaded).
• geo — place_id.

Token refresh

Access tokens expire (~2 h). Before each call the canister should refresh when within a safety buffer of expires_at, POSTing grant_type=refresh_token to https://api.x.com/2/oauth2/token with the stored refresh_token and Client ID. X rotates refresh tokens on every refresh — store the new access_token and refresh_token; reusing the old refresh token returns 400 and forces re-authorisation. x-client has no knowledge of refresh — it's canister-side; see the posting-to-x extension for the canonical code shape.

Rate limits

Free tier: 1500 posts/month, 500 reads/month per app. Back off on HTTP 429 in production; never silently retry a post (a retry may duplicate the tweet). X's rate-limit headers come back in the response body but the package does not interpret them.