loud tweets – a “twitter-to-speak” wp7 app (source code included)

‘loud tweets’ is a wp7 twitter app. You type in a twitter search keyword and the app refreshes the search every 60 seconds. All recived tweets will automatically be translated to english and spoken out loud by the phone.

I found inspiration for making this app in a Tim Heuer article ‘Make your Silverlight applications Speak to you with Microsoft Translator’

I haven’t had the chance to test this app on a wp7 device yet, but it works nice in the emulator 🙂

Go to the bottom off this page to find a link to the source code.

Architecture
  Be aware of this comment from Michael Washington
Cool it works on mt HTC HD7. Note, you just cant hear anything while debugging. This url explains how to debug using media: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jaimer/archive/2010/11/03/tips-for-debugging-wp7-media-apps-with-wpconnect.aspx

The ‘System.Speech’ library is not included in WP7/SL, but ‘text-to-speek’ can be done using the Speak-service in the Microsoft Bing Traslation API. You can send a string to Bing and get a sound-file back as a byte[]. You can’t play the the file directe (it’s not supported) and insted you have to save it to isolated storage and than load it and send it to a mediaelement-control.

The code requires a Bing Id, something you can get for free from this site: http://www.microsofttranslator.com/dev. Copy your Bing ID into the string ‘_appid’.

public partial class MainPage : PhoneApplicationPage
    {
        ...
        string _appId = "";
    }

The twitter search starts when the search textfield lose it’s focus and when you click on the bird image.

        private void txtTwitte_LostFocus(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            TwitterTimer();
        }

        private void imgTwitter_MouseLeftButtonDown(object sender, MouseButtonEventArgs e)
        {
            TwitterTimer();
        }

        private void TwitterTimer()
        {
            if (this.timelineTimer == null)
            {
                this.timelineTimer = new DispatcherTimer();
                this.timelineTimer.Tick += new EventHandler(TwitterTimer_Tick);
                this.timelineTimer.Interval = new TimeSpan(0, 1, 0);
                this.timelineTimer.Start();
            }

            this.TwitterTimer_Tick(this, EventArgs.Empty);
        }

        void TwitterTimer_Tick(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            twitter();
        }

This is the twitter search code:

        private void twitter()
        {
            try
            {
                if (txtTwitte.Text != "")
                {
                    lblLoading.Visibility = Visibility.Visible;
                    lboTwitte.Opacity = 0.3;

                    WebClient client = new WebClient();
                    client.DownloadStringAsync(new Uri(twitterUrl + txtTwitte.Text));
                    client.DownloadStringCompleted += ((s, e) =>
                    {
                        if (e.Error == null)
                        {
                            XDocument xml = XDocument.Parse(e.Result);
                            XNamespace atomNS = "http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom";

                            var tempList = (from entry in xml.Descendants(atomNS + "entry")
                                            select new TwitterObject()
                                            {
                                                ID = entry.Element(atomNS + "id").Value,
                                                Title = entry.Element(atomNS + "title").Value,
                                                Date = DateTime.Parse(entry.Element(atomNS + "published").Value),
                                                AuthorName = entry.Descendants(atomNS + "author").Elements(atomNS + "name").FirstOrDefault().Value,
                                                AuthorUri = entry.Descendants(atomNS + "author").Elements(atomNS + "uri").FirstOrDefault().Value,
                                                AuthorImage = (from imgElement in entry.Elements(atomNS + "link")
                                                               where imgElement.Attribute("rel") != null
                                                               && imgElement.Attribute("rel").Value.Contains("image")
                                                               && imgElement.Attribute("href") != null
                                                               select imgElement.Attribute("href").Value).FirstOrDefault()
                                            }).ToList();

                            twitteList = tempList.ToList();
                            lboTwitte.ItemsSource = twitteList;
                            lblLoading.Visibility = Visibility.Collapsed;
                            lboTwitte.Opacity = 1;

                            tweetLoud();
                        }
                    });
                }
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                MessageBox.Show(ex.ToString());
            }
        }

The method ‘tweetLoud()’ gets called when a result is received from twitter. This method keeps track on which tweets that’s already been “spoken out loud”. When it finds a new tweet it calls the ‘translate()’ method.

        private void tweetLoud()
        {
            if (soundOn)
            {
                for (int i = 0; i < lboTwitte.Items.Count; i++)
                {
                    TwitterObject twitterObject = (TwitterObject)lboTwitte.Items[i];

                    if(!tweetLoudList.Contains(twitterObject.Title))
                    {
                        tweetLoudList.Add(twitterObject.Title);
                        translate(twitterObject.Title);
                        break;
                    }
                }
            }
        }

Code for translating the tweet to english using the Bing Translate API:

        private void translate(string text)
        {
            try
            {
                if (soundOn)
                {
                    text = removeHtml(text);
                    WebClient client = new WebClient();
                    client.OpenReadCompleted += new OpenReadCompletedEventHandler(translate_Completed);
                    client.OpenReadAsync(new Uri(string.Format(translateUrl, _appId, "en", HttpUtility.UrlEncode(text))));
                }
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                tweetLoud();
                MessageBox.Show(ex.ToString());
            }
        }

        void translate_Completed(object sender, OpenReadCompletedEventArgs e)
        {
            try{
                if (e.Error == null)
                {
                    DataContractSerializer data = new DataContractSerializer(typeof(string));
                    string response = data.ReadObject(e.Result) as string;
                    speek(response);
                }
                else
                {
                    tweetLoud();
                }
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                tweetLoud();
                MessageBox.Show(ex.ToString());
            }
        }

This code recives a byte[] file from Bing, saves the file to isolated storage and plays the file in the medielement control.

        private void speek(string text)
        {
            try
            {
                if (soundOn)
                {
                    WebClient client = new WebClient();
                    client.OpenReadCompleted += new OpenReadCompletedEventHandler(speek_Completed);
                    client.OpenReadAsync(new Uri(string.Format(speakUrl, _appId, text, "en")));
                }
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                tweetLoud();
                MessageBox.Show(ex.ToString());
            }
        }

        void speek_Completed(object sender, OpenReadCompletedEventArgs e)
        {
            try
            {
                if (e.Error == null)
                {
                    var sound = e.Result;

                    media.Source = null;
                    string filename = "twitter";
                    using (IsolatedStorageFile userStoreForApplication = IsolatedStorageFile.GetUserStoreForApplication())
                    {
                        bool fileExists = userStoreForApplication.FileExists(filename);

                        if (fileExists)
                        {
                            userStoreForApplication.DeleteFile(filename);
                        }

                        var isolatedStorageFileStream = userStoreForApplication.CreateFile(filename);

                        using (isolatedStorageFileStream)
                        {
                            SaveFile(e.Result, isolatedStorageFileStream);

                            if (e.Error == null)
                            {
                                media.SetSource(isolatedStorageFileStream);
                                media.Play();
                                media.MediaEnded += new RoutedEventHandler(media_MediaEnded);
                                //tweetLoud();
                            }
                        }
                    }
                }
                else
                {
                    tweetLoud();
                }
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
`           {
                tweetLoud();
                MessageBox.Show(ex.ToString());
            }
        }

You can’t play the the file directe (it’s not supported) and insted you have to save it to isolated storage using this code:

        public static void SaveFile(Stream input, Stream output)
        {
            try
            {
                byte[] buffer = new byte[32768];
                while (true)
                {
                    int read = input.Read(buffer, 0, buffer.Length);
                    if (read <= 0)
                    {
                        return;
                    }
                    output.Write(buffer, 0, read);
                }
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                MessageBox.Show(ex.ToString());
            }
        }

When the mediaelement is done playing a tweet sound file it calls the method ‘tweetLoud()’ to get the next tweet translated and played.

        void media_MediaEnded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            try
            {
                tweetLoud();
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                MessageBox.Show(ex.ToString());
            }
        }

Download the source code:

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