Use Hbc Twitter Stream without specifying any track terms

Question

I followed the Quickstart from HBC and I managed to get some tweets from the Twitter Stream specifying some track terms, here is the code:

/** Declare the host you want to connect to, the endpoint, and authentication (basic auth or oauth) */
Hosts hosebirdHosts = new HttpHosts(Constants.STREAM_HOST);
StreamingEndpoint endpoint = new StatusesFilterEndpoint();
// Optional: set up some followings and track terms
List<Long> followings = Lists.newArrayList(1234L, 566788L);
List<String> terms = Lists.newArrayList("twitter", "api");
endpoint.followings(followings);
endpoint.trackTerms(terms);

Is it possible to get the twitter Stream with Hbc without specifying any track terms? I simply tried to remove the line "endpoint.trackTerms(terms);" but doing so it doesn't work.
Help me! Thanks!

Answer 1

It should work. I tried the example, and 'followed' myself and I received the Tweet I made whilst I was connected.

I suspect that the users you are following didn't have any activity whilst you were consuming the stream and that's why you didn't see any output - e.g. themselves Tweeting or somebody replying to one of their Tweets etc...

The follow parameter documentation outlines what activity you will see related to a followed user.

By the way, when specifying followings and trackTerms on the filter steam it's actually saying get me Tweets containing these terms or from these users. That's why you would see output when trackTerms was specified. This also goes for the additional locations parameter.