README

   1 Python Twitter Tools
   2 ====================
   3
   4 [![Build Status](https://travis-ci.org/sixohsix/twitter.svg)](https://travis-ci.org/sixohsix/twitter) [![Coverage Status](https://coveralls.io/repos/sixohsix/twitter/badge.png?branch=master)](https://coveralls.io/r/sixohsix/twitter?branch=master)
   5
   6 The Minimalist Twitter API for Python is a Python API for Twitter,
   7 everyone's favorite Web 2.0 Facebook-style status updater for people
   8 on the go.
   9
  10 Also included is a twitter command-line tool for getting your friends'
  11 tweets and setting your own tweet from the safety and security of your
  12 favorite shell and an IRC bot that can announce Twitter updates to an
  13 IRC channel.
  14
  15 For more information, after installing the `twitter` package:
  16
  17  * import the `twitter` package and run help() on it
  18  * run `twitter -h` for command-line tool help
  19
  20
  21 twitter - The Command-Line Tool
  22 -------------------------------
  23
  24 The command-line tool lets you do some awesome things:
  25
  26  * view your tweets, recent replies, and tweets in lists
  27  * view the public timeline
  28  * follow and unfollow (leave) friends
  29  * various output formats for tweet information
  30
  31 The bottom line: type `twitter`, receive tweets.
  32
  33
  34
  35 twitterbot - The IRC Bot
  36 ------------------------
  37
  38 The IRC bot is associated with a twitter account (either your own account or an
  39 account you create for the bot). The bot announces all tweets from friends
  40 it is following. It can be made to follow or leave friends through IRC /msg
  41 commands.
  42
  43
  44 twitter-log
  45 -----------
  46
  47 `twitter-log` is a simple command-line tool that dumps all public
  48 tweets from a given user in a simple text format. It is useful to get
  49 a complete offsite backup of all your tweets. Run `twitter-log` and
  50 read the instructions.
  51
  52 twitter-archiver and twitter-follow
  53 -----------------------------------
  54
  55 twitter-archiver will log all the tweets posted by any user since they
  56 started posting. twitter-follow will print a list of all of all the
  57 followers of a user (or all the users that user follows).
  58
  59
  60 Programming with the Twitter api classes
  61 ========================================
  62
  63 The Twitter and TwitterStream classes are the key to building your own
  64 Twitter-enabled applications.
  65
  66
  67 The Twitter class
  68 -----------------
  69
  70 The minimalist yet fully featured Twitter API class.
  71
  72 Get RESTful data by accessing members of this class. The result
  73 is decoded python objects (lists and dicts).
  74
  75 The Twitter API is documented at:
  76
  77 **[https://dev.twitter.com/overview/documentation](https://dev.twitter.com/overview/documentation)**
  78
  79 Examples:
  80 ```python
  81 from twitter import *
  82
  83 t = Twitter(
  84     auth=OAuth(token, token_key, con_secret, con_secret_key))
  85
  86 # Get your "home" timeline
  87 t.statuses.home_timeline()
  88
  89 # Get a particular friend's timeline
  90 t.statuses.user_timeline(screen_name="billybob")
  91
  92 # to pass in GET/POST parameters, such as `count`
  93 t.statuses.home_timeline(count=5)
  94
  95 # to pass in the GET/POST parameter `id` you need to use `_id`
  96 t.statuses.oembed(_id=1234567890)
  97
  98 # Update your status
  99 t.statuses.update(
 100     status="Using @sixohsix's sweet Python Twitter Tools.")
 101
 102 # Send a direct message
 103 t.direct_messages.new(
 104     user="billybob",
 105     text="I think yer swell!")
 106
 107 # Get the members of tamtar's list "Things That Are Rad"
 108 t._("tamtar")._("things-that-are-rad").members()
 109
 110 # Note how the magic `_` method can be used to insert data
 111 # into the middle of a call. You can also use replacement:
 112 t.user.list.members(user="tamtar", list="things-that-are-rad")
 113
 114 # An *optional* `_timeout` parameter can also be used for API
 115 # calls which take much more time than normal or twitter stops
 116 # responding for some reason:
 117 t.users.lookup(
 118     screen_name=','.join(A_LIST_OF_100_SCREEN_NAMES), _timeout=1)
 119
 120 # Overriding Method: GET/POST
 121 # you should not need to use this method as this library properly
 122 # detects whether GET or POST should be used, Nevertheless
 123 # to force a particular method, use `_method`
 124 t.statuses.oembed(_id=1234567890, _method='GET')
 125
 126 # Send a tweet with an image included (or set your banner or logo similarily)
 127 # by just reading your image from the web or a file in a string:
 128 status = "PTT ★"
 129 with open("example.png", "rb") as imagefile:
 130     params = {"media[]": imagefile.read(), "status": status}
 131 t.statuses.update_with_media(**params)
 132
 133 # Or by sending a base64 encoded image:
 134 params = {"media[]": base64_image, "status": status, "_base64": True}
 135 t.statuses.update_with_media(**params)
 136 ```
 137
 138 Searching Twitter:
 139 ```python
 140 # Search for the latest tweets about #pycon
 141 t.search.tweets(q="#pycon")
 142 ```
 143
 144
 145 Retrying after reaching the API rate limit
 146 ------------------------------------------
 147
 148 Simply create the `Twitter` instance with the argument `retry=True`, then the
 149 HTTP error codes 429, 502, 503 and 504 will cause a retry of the last request.
 150 If retry is an integer, it defines the number of retries attempted.
 151
 152
 153 Using the data returned
 154 -----------------------
 155
 156 Twitter API calls return decoded JSON. This is converted into
 157 a bunch of Python lists, dicts, ints, and strings. For example:
 158
 159 ```python
 160 x = twitter.statuses.home_timeline()
 161
 162 # The first 'tweet' in the timeline
 163 x[0]
 164
 165 # The screen name of the user who wrote the first 'tweet'
 166 x[0]['user']['screen_name']
 167 ```
 168
 169 Getting raw XML data
 170 --------------------
 171
 172 If you prefer to get your Twitter data in XML format, pass
 173 format="xml" to the Twitter object when you instantiate it:
 174
 175 ```python
 176 twitter = Twitter(format="xml")
 177 ```
 178
 179 The output will not be parsed in any way. It will be a raw string
 180 of XML.
 181
 182
 183 The TwitterStream class
 184 -----------------------
 185
 186 The TwitterStream object is an interface to the Twitter Stream
 187 API. This can be used pretty much the same as the Twitter class
 188 except the result of calling a method will be an iterator that
 189 yields objects decoded from the stream. For example::
 190
 191 ```python
 192 twitter_stream = TwitterStream(auth=OAuth(...))
 193 iterator = twitter_stream.statuses.sample()
 194
 195 for tweet in iterator:
 196     ...do something with this tweet...
 197 ```
 198
 199 Per default the ``TwitterStream`` object uses
 200 [public streams](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis/streams/public).
 201 If you want to use one of the other
 202 [streaming APIs](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis), specify the URL
 203 manually:
 204
 205 - [Public streams](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis/streams/public): stream.twitter.com
 206 - [User streams](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis/streams/user): userstream.twitter.com
 207 - [Site streams](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis/streams/site): sitestream.twitter.com
 208
 209 Note that you require the proper
 210 [permissions](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/application-permission-model) to
 211 access these streams. E.g. for direct messages your
 212 [application](https://dev.twitter.com/apps) needs the "Read, Write & Direct
 213 Messages" permission.
 214
 215 The following example demonstrates how to retrieve all new direct messages
 216 from the user stream:
 217
 218 ```python
 219 auth = OAuth(
 220     consumer_key='[your consumer key]',
 221     consumer_secret='[your consumer secret]',
 222     token='[your token]',
 223     token_secret='[your token secret]'
 224 )
 225 twitter_userstream = TwitterStream(auth=auth, domain='userstream.twitter.com')
 226 for msg in twitter_userstream.user():
 227     if 'direct_message' in msg:
 228         print msg['direct_message']['text']
 229 ```
 230
 231 The iterator will yield until the TCP connection breaks. When the
 232 connection breaks, the iterator yields `{'hangup': True}`, and
 233 raises `StopIteration` if iterated again.
 234
 235 Similarly, if the stream does not produce heartbeats for more than
 236 90 seconds, the iterator yields `{'hangup': True,
 237 'heartbeat_timeout': True}`, and raises `StopIteration` if
 238 iterated again.
 239
 240 The `timeout` parameter controls the maximum time between
 241 yields. If it is nonzero, then the iterator will yield either
 242 stream data or `{'timeout': True}` within the timeout period. This
 243 is useful if you want your program to do other stuff in between
 244 waiting for tweets.
 245
 246 The `block` parameter sets the stream to be fully non-blocking. In
 247 this mode, the iterator always yields immediately. It returns
 248 stream data, or `None`. Note that `timeout` supercedes this
 249 argument, so it should also be set `None` to use this mode,
 250 and non-blocking can potentially lead to 100% CPU usage.
 251
 252 Twitter Response Objects
 253 ------------------------
 254
 255 Response from a twitter request. Behaves like a list or a string
 256 (depending on requested format) but it has a few other interesting
 257 attributes.
 258
 259 `headers` gives you access to the response headers as an
 260 httplib.HTTPHeaders instance. You can do
 261 `response.headers.get('h')` to retrieve a header.
 262
 263 Authentication
 264 --------------
 265
 266 You can authenticate with Twitter in three ways: NoAuth, OAuth, or
 267 OAuth2 (app-only). Get help() on these classes to learn how to use them.
 268
 269 OAuth and OAuth2 are probably the most useful.
 270
 271
 272 Working with OAuth
 273 ------------------
 274
 275 Visit the Twitter developer page and create a new application:
 276
 277 **[https://dev.twitter.com/apps/new](https://dev.twitter.com/apps/new)**
 278
 279 This will get you a CONSUMER_KEY and CONSUMER_SECRET.
 280
 281 When users run your application they have to authenticate your app
 282 with their Twitter account. A few HTTP calls to twitter are required
 283 to do this. Please see the twitter.oauth_dance module to see how this
 284 is done. If you are making a command-line app, you can use the
 285 oauth_dance() function directly.
 286
 287 Performing the "oauth dance" gets you an ouath token and oauth secret
 288 that authenticate the user with Twitter. You should save these for
 289 later so that the user doesn't have to do the oauth dance again.
 290
 291 read_token_file and write_token_file are utility methods to read and
 292 write OAuth token and secret key values. The values are stored as
 293 strings in the file. Not terribly exciting.
 294
 295 Finally, you can use the OAuth authenticator to connect to Twitter. In
 296 code it all goes like this:
 297
 298 ```python
 299 from twitter import *
 300
 301 MY_TWITTER_CREDS = os.path.expanduser('~/.my_app_credentials')
 302 if not os.path.exists(MY_TWITTER_CREDS):
 303     oauth_dance("My App Name", CONSUMER_KEY, CONSUMER_SECRET,
 304                 MY_TWITTER_CREDS)
 305
 306 oauth_token, oauth_secret = read_token_file(MY_TWITTER_CREDS)
 307
 308 twitter = Twitter(auth=OAuth(
 309     oauth_token, oauth_token_secret, CONSUMER_KEY, CONSUMER_SECRET))
 310
 311 # Now work with Twitter
 312 twitter.statuses.update(status='Hello, world!')
 313 ```
 314
 315 Working with OAuth2
 316 -------------------
 317
 318 Twitter only supports the application-only flow of OAuth2 for certain
 319 API endpoints. This OAuth2 authenticator only supports the application-only
 320 flow right now.
 321
 322 To authenticate with OAuth2, visit the Twitter developer page and create a new
 323 application:
 324
 325 **[https://dev.twitter.com/apps/new](https://dev.twitter.com/apps/new)**
 326
 327 This will get you a CONSUMER_KEY and CONSUMER_SECRET.
 328
 329 Exchange your CONSUMER_KEY and CONSUMER_SECRET for a bearer token using the
 330 oauth2_dance function.
 331
 332 Finally, you can use the OAuth2 authenticator and your bearer token to connect
 333 to Twitter. In code it goes like this::
 334
 335 ```python
 336 twitter = Twitter(auth=OAuth2(bearer_token=BEARER_TOKEN))
 337
 338 # Now work with Twitter
 339 twitter.search.tweets(q='keyword')
 340 ```
 341
 342 License
 343 =======
 344
 345 Python Twitter Tools are released under an MIT License.