How do I get tweets based on location only?

Question

I am using the following: https://api.twitter.com/1.1/search/tweets.json?q=SearchTerm&geocode=37.781157,-122.398720,20km to get tweets from a certain location. I have noticed that the q parameter needs to have a value or else I get "The remote server returned an error: (401) Unauthorized".

When using the now deprecated Search API : http://search.twitter.com/search.json?q=&geocode=37.781157,-122.398720,20km one could omit a value for the q parameter and still get results back.

Is there a wildcard character or any other way to omit specifying a value (search term) for the q parameter in https://api.twitter.com/1.1/search/tweets.json?q=SearchTerm&geocode=37.781157,-122.398720,20km ? Any ideas?

Answer 1

The problem was my OAuth base signature string being invalid:

Check that the , used in the geocode value are double escaped - it has to be like 37.781157%252C-122.398720%252C1mi and not 37.781157%2C-122.398720%2C1mi.

Below is a valid OAuth signature example:

GET&https%3A%2F%2Fapi.twitter.com%2F1.1%2Fsearch%2Ftweets.json
&geocode%3D37.781157%252C-122.398720%252C1mi
%26oauth_consumer_key%3D...
%26oauth_nonce%3DToul8
%26oauth_signature_method%3DHMAC-SHA1
%26oauth_timestamp%3D1364420628
%26oauth_token%3D...
%26oauth_version%3D1.0
%26q%3D