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1 | Python Twitter Tools | |
2 | ==================== | |
3 | ||
4 | The Minimalist Twitter API for Python is a Python API for Twitter, | |
5 | everyone's favorite Web 2.0 Facebook-style status updater for people | |
6 | on the go. | |
7 | ||
8 | Also included is a twitter command-line tool for getting your friends' | |
9 | tweets and setting your own tweet from the safety and security of your | |
10 | favorite shell and an IRC bot that can announce Twitter updates to an | |
11 | IRC channel. | |
12 | ||
13 | For more information, after installing the `twitter` package: | |
14 | ||
15 | * import the `twitter` package and run help() on it | |
16 | * run `twitter -h` for command-line tool help | |
17 | ||
18 | ||
19 | twitter - The Command-Line Tool | |
20 | ------------------------------- | |
21 | ||
22 | The command-line tool lets you do some awesome things: | |
23 | ||
24 | * view your tweets, recent replies, and tweets in lists | |
25 | * view the public timeline | |
26 | * follow and unfollow (leave) friends | |
27 | * various output formats for tweet information | |
28 | ||
29 | The bottom line: type `twitter`, receive tweets. | |
30 | ||
31 | ||
32 | ||
33 | twitterbot - The IRC Bot | |
34 | ------------------------ | |
35 | ||
36 | The IRC bot is associated with a twitter account (either your own account or an | |
37 | account you create for the bot). The bot announces all tweets from friends | |
38 | it is following. It can be made to follow or leave friends through IRC /msg | |
39 | commands. | |
40 | ||
41 | ||
42 | twitter-log | |
43 | ----------- | |
44 | ||
45 | `twitter-log` is a simple command-line tool that dumps all public | |
46 | tweets from a given user in a simple text format. It is useful to get | |
47 | a complete offsite backup of all your tweets. Run `twitter-log` and | |
48 | read the instructions. | |
49 | ||
50 | twitter-archiver and twitter-follow | |
51 | ----------------------------------- | |
52 | ||
53 | twitter-archiver will log all the tweets posted by any user since they | |
54 | started posting. twitter-follow will print a list of all of all the | |
55 | followers of a user (or all the users that user follows). | |
56 | ||
57 | ||
58 | Programming with the Twitter api classes | |
59 | ======================================== | |
60 | ||
61 | ||
62 | The Twitter and TwitterStream classes are the key to building your own | |
63 | Twitter-enabled applications. | |
64 | ||
65 | ||
66 | The Twitter class | |
67 | ----------------- | |
68 | ||
69 | The minimalist yet fully featured Twitter API class. | |
70 | ||
71 | Get RESTful data by accessing members of this class. The result | |
72 | is decoded python objects (lists and dicts). | |
73 | ||
74 | The Twitter API is documented at: | |
75 | ||
76 | **[http://dev.twitter.com/doc](http://dev.twitter.com/doc)** | |
77 | ||
78 | ||
79 | Examples:: | |
80 | ||
81 | ```python | |
82 | from twitter import * | |
83 | ||
84 | # see "Authentication" section below for tokens and keys | |
85 | t = Twitter( | |
86 | auth=OAuth(OAUTH_TOKEN, OAUTH_SECRET, | |
87 | CONSUMER_KEY, CONSUMER_SECRET) | |
88 | ) | |
89 | ||
90 | # Get your "home" timeline | |
91 | t.statuses.home_timeline() | |
92 | ||
93 | # Get a particular friend's timeline | |
94 | t.statuses.user_timeline(screen_name="billybob") | |
95 | ||
96 | # to pass in GET/POST parameters, such as `count` | |
97 | t.statuses.home_timeline(count=5) | |
98 | ||
99 | # to pass in the GET/POST parameter `id` you need to use `_id` | |
100 | t.statuses.oembed(_id=1234567890) | |
101 | ||
102 | # Update your status | |
103 | t.statuses.update( | |
104 | status="Using @sixohsix's sweet Python Twitter Tools.") | |
105 | ||
106 | # Send a direct message | |
107 | t.direct_messages.new( | |
108 | user="billybob", | |
109 | text="I think yer swell!") | |
110 | ||
111 | # Get the members of tamtar's list "Things That Are Rad" | |
112 | t._("tamtar")._("things-that-are-rad").members() | |
113 | ||
114 | # Note how the magic `_` method can be used to insert data | |
115 | # into the middle of a call. You can also use replacement: | |
116 | t.user.list.members(user="tamtar", list="things-that-are-rad") | |
117 | ||
118 | # An *optional* `_timeout` parameter can also be used for API | |
119 | # calls which take much more time than normal or twitter stops | |
120 | # responding for some reasone | |
121 | t.users.lookup(screen_name=','.join(A_LIST_OF_100_SCREEN_NAMES), _timeout=1) | |
122 | ||
123 | # Overriding Method: GET/POST | |
124 | # you should not need to use this method as this library properly | |
125 | # detects whether GET or POST should be used, Nevertheless | |
126 | # to force a particular method, use `_method` | |
127 | t.statuses.oembed(_id=1234567890, _method='GET') | |
128 | ``` | |
129 | ||
130 | Searching Twitter:: | |
131 | ||
132 | ``` python | |
133 | # Search for the latest tweets about #pycon | |
134 | t.search.tweets(q="#pycon") | |
135 | ``` | |
136 | ||
137 | Using the data returned | |
138 | ----------------------- | |
139 | ||
140 | Twitter API calls return decoded JSON. This is converted into | |
141 | a bunch of Python lists, dicts, ints, and strings. For example:: | |
142 | ||
143 | ```python | |
144 | x = twitter.statuses.home_timeline() | |
145 | ||
146 | # The first 'tweet' in the timeline | |
147 | x[0] | |
148 | ||
149 | # The screen name of the user who wrote the first 'tweet' | |
150 | x[0]['user']['screen_name'] | |
151 | ``` | |
152 | ||
153 | Getting raw XML data | |
154 | -------------------- | |
155 | ||
156 | If you prefer to get your Twitter data in XML format, pass | |
157 | format="xml" to the Twitter object when you instantiate it:: | |
158 | ||
159 | ```python | |
160 | twitter = Twitter(format="xml") | |
161 | ``` | |
162 | ||
163 | The output will not be parsed in any way. It will be a raw string | |
164 | of XML. | |
165 | ||
166 | ||
167 | The TwitterStream class | |
168 | ----------------------- | |
169 | ||
170 | The TwitterStream object is an interface to the Twitter Stream API | |
171 | (stream.twitter.com). This can be used pretty much the same as the | |
172 | Twitter class except the result of calling a method will be an | |
173 | iterator that yields objects decoded from the stream. For | |
174 | example:: | |
175 | ||
176 | ```python | |
177 | twitter_stream = TwitterStream(auth=UserPassAuth('joe', 'joespassword')) | |
178 | iterator = twitter_stream.statuses.sample() | |
179 | ||
180 | for tweet in iterator: | |
181 | # ...do something with this tweet... | |
182 | ``` | |
183 | ||
184 | The iterator will yield tweets forever and ever (until the stream | |
185 | breaks at which point it raises a TwitterHTTPError.) | |
186 | ||
187 | The `block` parameter controls if the stream is blocking. Default | |
188 | is blocking (True). When set to False, the iterator will | |
189 | occasionally yield None when there is no available message. | |
190 | ||
191 | Per default the ``TwitterStream`` object uses | |
192 | [public streams](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis/streams/public). | |
193 | If you want to use one of the other | |
194 | [streaming APIs](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis), specify the URL | |
195 | manually: | |
196 | ||
197 | - [Public streams](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis/streams/public): stream.twitter.com | |
198 | - [User streams](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis/streams/user): userstream.twitter.com | |
199 | - [Site streams](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis/streams/site): sitestream.twitter.com | |
200 | ||
201 | Note that you require the proper | |
202 | [permissions](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/application-permission-model) to | |
203 | access these streams. E.g. for direct messages your | |
204 | [application](https://dev.twitter.com/apps) needs the "Read, Write & Direct | |
205 | Messages" permission. | |
206 | ||
207 | The following example demonstrates how to retreive all new direct messages | |
208 | from the user stream: | |
209 | ||
210 | ```python | |
211 | auth = OAuth( | |
212 | consumer_key='[your consumer key]', | |
213 | consumer_secret='[your consumer secret]', | |
214 | token='[your token]', | |
215 | token_secret='[your token secret]' | |
216 | ) | |
217 | twitter_userstream = TwitterStream(auth=auth, domain='userstream.twitter.com') | |
218 | for msg in twitter_userstream.user(): | |
219 | if 'direct_message' in msg: | |
220 | print msg['direct_message']['text'] | |
221 | ``` | |
222 | ||
223 | Twitter Response Objects | |
224 | ------------------------ | |
225 | ||
226 | Response from a twitter request. Behaves like a list or a string | |
227 | (depending on requested format) but it has a few other interesting | |
228 | attributes. | |
229 | ||
230 | `headers` gives you access to the response headers as an | |
231 | httplib.HTTPHeaders instance. You can do | |
232 | `response.headers.getheader('h')` to retrieve a header. | |
233 | ||
234 | Authentication | |
235 | -------------- | |
236 | ||
237 | You can authenticate with Twitter in three ways: NoAuth, OAuth, or | |
238 | UserPassAuth. Get help() on these classes to learn how to use them. | |
239 | ||
240 | OAuth is probably the most useful. | |
241 | ||
242 | ||
243 | Working with OAuth | |
244 | ------------------ | |
245 | ||
246 | Visit the Twitter developer page and create a new application: | |
247 | ||
248 | **[https://dev.twitter.com/apps/new](https://dev.twitter.com/apps/new)** | |
249 | ||
250 | This will get you a CONSUMER_KEY and CONSUMER_SECRET. | |
251 | ||
252 | When users run your application they have to authenticate your app | |
253 | with their Twitter account. A few HTTP calls to twitter are required | |
254 | to do this. Please see the twitter.oauth_dance module to see how this | |
255 | is done. If you are making a command-line app, you can use the | |
256 | oauth_dance() function directly. | |
257 | ||
258 | Performing the "oauth dance" gets you an oauth token and oauth secret | |
259 | that authenticate the user with Twitter. You should save these for | |
260 | later so that the user doesn't have to do the oauth dance again. | |
261 | ||
262 | read_token_file and write_token_file are utility methods to read and | |
263 | write OAuth token and secret key values. The values are stored as | |
264 | strings in the file. Not terribly exciting. | |
265 | ||
266 | Finally, you can use the OAuth authenticator to connect to Twitter. In | |
267 | code it all goes like this:: | |
268 | ||
269 | ```python | |
270 | from twitter import * | |
271 | ||
272 | MY_TWITTER_CREDS = os.path.expanduser('~/.my_app_credentials') | |
273 | if not os.path.exists(MY_TWITTER_CREDS): | |
274 | oauth_dance("My App Name", CONSUMER_KEY, CONSUMER_SECRET, | |
275 | MY_TWITTER_CREDS) | |
276 | ||
277 | oauth_token, oauth_secret = read_token_file(MY_TWITTER_CREDS) | |
278 | ||
279 | twitter = Twitter(auth=OAuth( | |
280 | oauth_token, oauth_secret, CONSUMER_KEY, CONSUMER_SECRET)) | |
281 | ||
282 | # Now work with Twitter | |
283 | twitter.statuses.update(status='Hello, world!') | |
284 | ``` | |
285 | ||
286 | ||
287 | License | |
288 | ======= | |
289 | ||
290 | Python Twitter Tools are released under an MIT License. |