README

   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.