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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 | |
77 | ||
78 | ||
79 | Examples:: | |
80 | ||
81 | t = Twitter( | |
82 | auth=OAuth(token, token_key, con_secret, con_secret_key))) | |
83 | ||
84 | # Get the public timeline | |
85 | t.statuses.public_timeline() | |
86 | ||
87 | # Get a particular friend's timeline | |
88 | t.statuses.friends_timeline(id="billybob") | |
89 | ||
90 | # Also supported (but totally weird) | |
91 | t.statuses.friends_timeline.billybob() | |
92 | ||
93 | # Update your status | |
94 | t.statuses.update( | |
95 | status="Using @sixohsix's sweet Python Twitter Tools.") | |
96 | ||
97 | # Send a direct message | |
98 | t.direct_messages.new( | |
99 | user="billybob", | |
100 | text="I think yer swell!") | |
101 | ||
102 | # Get the members of tamtar's list "Things That Are Rad" | |
103 | t._("tamtar")._("things-that-are-rad").members() | |
104 | ||
105 | # Note how the magic `_` method can be used to insert data | |
106 | # into the middle of a call. You can also use replacement: | |
107 | t.user.list.members(user="tamtar", list="things-that-are-rad") | |
108 | ||
109 | ||
110 | Searching Twitter:: | |
111 | ||
112 | twitter_search = Twitter(domain="search.twitter.com") | |
113 | ||
114 | # Find the latest search trends | |
115 | twitter_search.trends() | |
116 | ||
117 | # Search for the latest News on #gaza | |
118 | twitter_search.search(q="#gaza") | |
119 | ||
120 | ||
121 | Using the data returned | |
122 | ----------------------- | |
123 | ||
124 | Twitter API calls return decoded JSON. This is converted into | |
125 | a bunch of Python lists, dicts, ints, and strings. For example:: | |
126 | ||
127 | x = twitter.statuses.public_timeline() | |
128 | ||
129 | # The first 'tweet' in the timeline | |
130 | x[0] | |
131 | ||
132 | # The screen name of the user who wrote the first 'tweet' | |
133 | x[0]['user']['screen_name'] | |
134 | ||
135 | ||
136 | Getting raw XML data | |
137 | -------------------- | |
138 | ||
139 | If you prefer to get your Twitter data in XML format, pass | |
140 | format="xml" to the Twitter object when you instantiate it:: | |
141 | ||
142 | twitter = Twitter(format="xml") | |
143 | ||
144 | The output will not be parsed in any way. It will be a raw string | |
145 | of XML. | |
146 | ||
147 | ||
148 | The TwitterStream class | |
149 | ----------------------- | |
150 | ||
151 | The TwitterStream object is an interface to the Twitter Stream API | |
152 | (stream.twitter.com). This can be used pretty much the same as the | |
153 | Twitter class except the result of calling a method will be an | |
154 | iterator that yields objects decoded from the stream. For | |
155 | example:: | |
156 | ||
157 | twitter_stream = TwitterStream(auth=UserPassAuth('joe', 'joespassword')) | |
158 | iterator = twitter_stream.statuses.sample() | |
159 | ||
160 | for tweet in iterator: | |
161 | ...do something with this tweet... | |
162 | ||
163 | The iterator will yield tweets forever and ever (until the stream | |
164 | breaks at which point it raises a TwitterHTTPError.) | |
165 | ||
166 | The `block` parameter controls if the stream is blocking. Default | |
167 | is blocking (True). When set to False, the iterator will | |
168 | occasionally yield None when there is no available message. | |
169 | ||
170 | Twitter Response Objects | |
171 | ------------------------ | |
172 | ||
173 | Response from a twitter request. Behaves like a list or a string | |
174 | (depending on requested format) but it has a few other interesting | |
175 | attributes. | |
176 | ||
177 | `headers` gives you access to the response headers as an | |
178 | httplib.HTTPHeaders instance. You can do | |
179 | `response.headers.getheader('h')` to retrieve a header. | |
180 | ||
181 | Authentication | |
182 | -------------- | |
183 | ||
184 | You can authenticate with Twitter in three ways: NoAuth, OAuth, or | |
185 | UserPassAuth. Get help() on these classes to learn how to use them. | |
186 | ||
187 | OAuth is probably the most useful. | |
188 | ||
189 | ||
190 | Working with OAuth | |
191 | ------------------ | |
192 | ||
193 | Visit the Twitter developer page and create a new application: | |
194 | ||
195 | https://dev.twitter.com/apps/new | |
196 | ||
197 | This will get you a CONSUMER_KEY and CONSUMER_SECRET. | |
198 | ||
199 | When users run your application they have to authenticate your app | |
200 | with their Twitter account. A few HTTP calls to twitter are required | |
201 | to do this. Please see the twitter.oauth_dance module to see how this | |
202 | is done. If you are making a command-line app, you can use the | |
203 | oauth_dance() function directly. | |
204 | ||
205 | Performing the "oauth dance" gets you an ouath token and oauth secret | |
206 | that authenticate the user with Twitter. You should save these for | |
207 | later so that the user doesn't have to do the oauth dance again. | |
208 | ||
209 | read_token_file and write_token_file are utility methods to read and | |
210 | write OAuth token and secret key values. The values are stored as | |
211 | strings in the file. Not terribly exciting. | |
212 | ||
213 | Finally, you can use the OAuth authenticator to connect to Twitter. In | |
214 | code it all goes like this:: | |
215 | ||
216 | MY_TWITTER_CREDS = os.path.expanduser('~/.my_app_credentials') | |
217 | if not os.path.exists(MY_TWITTER_CREDS): | |
218 | oauth_dance("My App Name", CONSUMER_KEY, CONSUMER_SECRET, | |
219 | MY_TWITTER_CREDS) | |
220 | ||
221 | oauth_token, oauth_secret = read_token_file(MY_TWITTER_CREDS) | |
222 | ||
223 | twitter = Twitter(auth=OAuth( | |
224 | oauth_token, oauth_token_secret, CONSUMER_KEY, CONSUMER_SECRET)) | |
225 | ||
226 | # Now work with Twitter | |
227 | twitter.statuses.update('Hello, world!') | |
228 | ||
229 | ||
230 | ||
231 | License | |
232 | ======= | |
233 | ||
234 | Python Twitter Tools are released under an MIT License. |