Leveraging the Twitter Adapter in ICS – Tweeting through Oracle Integration Cloud Service

The Oracle Integration Cloud Service – ICS – comes loaded with a rich collection of Cloud Adapters. These adapters facilitate the integration with SaaS applications and internet services of various natures. These include Oracle SaaS applications (such as RightNow, Eloqua, ECommerce Cloud, ERP Cloud, HCM Cloud), on premises ERP applications (SAP, EBusiness Suite, Siebel) and assorted third party applications such as SalesForce, Facebook, Google Mail and Task, LinkedIn and Evernote. Through these adapters, interacting with said applications and services becomes a simple, declarative operation instead of a custom programming effort.

In this article, I will use the Twitter Adapter to create a connection to a Twitter Account (leveraging the Twitter API under the covers). The Twitter Adapters exposes over a dozen operations. I will use just the operation to publish a message (aka Tweet) in this example. From ICS, I will expose an integration through a simple REST connection. This allows trusted consumers to publish Tweets in a very easy way – leaving the authorization details and the API intricacies to ICS.

The steps I went through:

• Grant access to [ICS Connection] app in the Twitter developer page and generate API Key and Consumer Key
• Create a new ICS Connection based on Twitter Adapter; set up the API Key and Consumer Key
• Create an ICS REST Connection (to expose)
• Create an integration – between REST Connection as inbound (source) to Twitter Connection (as outbound destination); configure the endpoint (inbound) and operation (inbound and outbound)
• Create the mappings for request and response
• Define the tracking – business identifiers
• Activate the integration
• Test the exposed REST connection from any REST client, for example SoapUI, to Tweet a message through a simple REST POST call

Most of these steps are explained by the screenshots you will find below.

One step I did not have to through because the certificate already had been set up on my ICS instance is uploading Twitter’s security certificate (see in ICS docs: Uploading the SSL certificate and on Twitter: https://dev.twitter.com/overview/api/tls ). At the end of the article, you will find what I believe the steps should be in cases where this certificate is not already set up.

 

Grant access to [ICS Connection] app in the Twitter developer page and generate API Key and Consumer Key

Go to the Twitter developer page at https://dev.twitter.com and follow the instructions in the ICS documentation.

 

Create a new ICS Connection based on Twitter Adapter; set up the API Key and Consumer Key

 

Create an ICS REST Connection (to expose)

 

Create an integration – between REST Connection as inbound (source) to Twitter Connection (as outbound destination)

And the destination:

Pick the operation in the Twitter API that is to be invoked:

 

Create the mappings for request and response

And the response mapping:

 

Define the tracking – business identifiers

Activate the integration

Find the exposed endpoint:

Test the exposed REST connection

from any REST client, for example SoapUI, to Tweet a message through a simple REST POST call

Note: basic authorization has to be provided using valid ICS credentials

And verify in the Twitter web client:

Verify the monitoring in ICS:

Uploading an SSL Certificate

Certificates are used to validate outbound SSL connections. If you make an SSL connection in which the root certificate does not exist in Oracle Integration Cloud Service, an exception is thrown. In that case, you must upload the appropriate certificate. A certificate enables Oracle Integration Cloud Service to connect with external services. If the external endpoint requires a specific certificate, request the certificate and then upload it into Integration Cloud Service.

One way to get hold of the certificate is through the browser – for example Google Chrome:

 

Download certificate:

And upload in ICS:

 

See in ICS docs: Uploading the SSL certificate and on Twitter: https://dev.twitter.com/overview/api/tls

Resources

ICS Documentation on Twitter Adapter: https://docs.oracle.com/cloud/latest/intcs_gs/ICSTW/toc.htm

Twitter developer page at https://dev.twitter.com.