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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
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
15 For more information, after installing the `twitter` package:
17 * import the `twitter` package and run help() on it
18 * run `twitter -h` for command-line tool help
21 twitter - The Command-Line Tool
22 -------------------------------
24 The command-line tool lets you do some awesome things:
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
31 The bottom line: type `twitter`, receive tweets.
35 twitterbot - The IRC Bot
36 ------------------------
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
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.
52 twitter-archiver and twitter-follow
53 -----------------------------------
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).
60 Programming with the Twitter api classes
61 ========================================
63 The Twitter and TwitterStream classes are the key to building your own
64 Twitter-enabled applications.
70 The minimalist yet fully featured Twitter API class.
72 Get RESTful data by accessing members of this class. The result
73 is decoded python objects (lists and dicts).
75 The Twitter API is documented at:
77 **[http://dev.twitter.com/doc](http://dev.twitter.com/doc)**
84 auth=OAuth(token, token_key, con_secret, con_secret_key)))
86 # Get your "home" timeline
87 t.statuses.home_timeline()
89 # Get a particular friend's timeline
90 t.statuses.user_timeline(screen_name="billybob")
92 # to pass in GET/POST parameters, such as `count`
93 t.statuses.home_timeline(count=5)
95 # to pass in the GET/POST parameter `id` you need to use `_id`
96 t.statuses.oembed(_id=1234567890)
100 status="Using @sixohsix's sweet Python Twitter Tools.")
102 # Send a direct message
103 t.direct_messages.new(
105 text="I think yer swell!")
107 # Get the members of tamtar's list "Things That Are Rad"
108 t._("tamtar")._("things-that-are-rad").members()
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")
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:
118 screen_name=','.join(A_LIST_OF_100_SCREEN_NAMES), _timeout=1)
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')
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 # Note that the text sent as status along with the picture must be unicode.
129 status = u"PTT ★" # or with python 3: status = "PTT ★"
130 with open("example.png", "rb") as imagefile:
131 params = {"media[]": imagefile.read(), "status": status}
132 t.statuses.update_with_media(**params)
134 # Or by sending a base64 encoded image:
135 params = {"media[]": base64_image, "status": status, "_base64": True}
136 t.statuses.update_with_media(**params)
142 # Search for the latest tweets about #pycon
143 t.search.tweets(q="#pycon")
146 Using the data returned
147 -----------------------
149 Twitter API calls return decoded JSON. This is converted into
150 a bunch of Python lists, dicts, ints, and strings. For example:
153 x = twitter.statuses.home_timeline()
155 # The first 'tweet' in the timeline
158 # The screen name of the user who wrote the first 'tweet'
159 x[0]['user']['screen_name']
165 If you prefer to get your Twitter data in XML format, pass
166 format="xml" to the Twitter object when you instantiate it:
169 twitter = Twitter(format="xml")
172 The output will not be parsed in any way. It will be a raw string
176 The TwitterStream class
177 -----------------------
179 The TwitterStream object is an interface to the Twitter Stream
180 API. This can be used pretty much the same as the Twitter class
181 except the result of calling a method will be an iterator that
182 yields objects decoded from the stream. For example::
185 twitter_stream = TwitterStream(auth=OAuth(...))
186 iterator = twitter_stream.statuses.sample()
188 for tweet in iterator:
189 ...do something with this tweet...
192 Per default the ``TwitterStream`` object uses
193 [public streams](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis/streams/public).
194 If you want to use one of the other
195 [streaming APIs](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis), specify the URL
198 - [Public streams](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis/streams/public): stream.twitter.com
199 - [User streams](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis/streams/user): userstream.twitter.com
200 - [Site streams](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis/streams/site): sitestream.twitter.com
202 Note that you require the proper
203 [permissions](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/application-permission-model) to
204 access these streams. E.g. for direct messages your
205 [application](https://dev.twitter.com/apps) needs the "Read, Write & Direct
206 Messages" permission.
208 The following example demonstrates how to retrieve all new direct messages
209 from the user stream:
213 consumer_key='[your consumer key]',
214 consumer_secret='[your consumer secret]',
215 token='[your token]',
216 token_secret='[your token secret]'
218 twitter_userstream = TwitterStream(auth=auth, domain='userstream.twitter.com')
219 for msg in twitter_userstream.user():
220 if 'direct_message' in msg:
221 print msg['direct_message']['text']
224 The iterator will yield until the TCP connection breaks. When the
225 connection breaks, the iterator yields `{'hangup': True}`, and
226 raises `StopIteration` if iterated again.
228 Similarly, if the stream does not produce heartbeats for more than
229 90 seconds, the iterator yields `{'hangup': True,
230 'heartbeat_timeout': True}`, and raises `StopIteration` if
233 The `timeout` parameter controls the maximum time between
234 yields. If it is nonzero, then the iterator will yield either
235 stream data or `{'timeout': True}` within the timeout period. This
236 is useful if you want your program to do other stuff in between
239 The `block` parameter sets the stream to be fully non-blocking. In
240 this mode, the iterator always yields immediately. It returns
241 stream data, or `None`. Note that `timeout` supercedes this
242 argument, so it should also be set `None` to use this mode,
243 and non-blocking can potentially lead to 100% CPU usage.
245 Twitter Response Objects
246 ------------------------
248 Response from a twitter request. Behaves like a list or a string
249 (depending on requested format) but it has a few other interesting
252 `headers` gives you access to the response headers as an
253 httplib.HTTPHeaders instance. You can do
254 `response.headers.get('h')` to retrieve a header.
259 You can authenticate with Twitter in three ways: NoAuth, OAuth, or
260 OAuth2 (app-only). Get help() on these classes to learn how to use them.
262 OAuth and OAuth2 are probably the most useful.
268 Visit the Twitter developer page and create a new application:
270 **[https://dev.twitter.com/apps/new](https://dev.twitter.com/apps/new)**
272 This will get you a CONSUMER_KEY and CONSUMER_SECRET.
274 When users run your application they have to authenticate your app
275 with their Twitter account. A few HTTP calls to twitter are required
276 to do this. Please see the twitter.oauth_dance module to see how this
277 is done. If you are making a command-line app, you can use the
278 oauth_dance() function directly.
280 Performing the "oauth dance" gets you an ouath token and oauth secret
281 that authenticate the user with Twitter. You should save these for
282 later so that the user doesn't have to do the oauth dance again.
284 read_token_file and write_token_file are utility methods to read and
285 write OAuth token and secret key values. The values are stored as
286 strings in the file. Not terribly exciting.
288 Finally, you can use the OAuth authenticator to connect to Twitter. In
289 code it all goes like this:
292 from twitter import *
294 MY_TWITTER_CREDS = os.path.expanduser('~/.my_app_credentials')
295 if not os.path.exists(MY_TWITTER_CREDS):
296 oauth_dance("My App Name", CONSUMER_KEY, CONSUMER_SECRET,
299 oauth_token, oauth_secret = read_token_file(MY_TWITTER_CREDS)
301 twitter = Twitter(auth=OAuth(
302 oauth_token, oauth_token_secret, CONSUMER_KEY, CONSUMER_SECRET))
304 # Now work with Twitter
305 twitter.statuses.update(status='Hello, world!')
311 Twitter only supports the application-only flow of OAuth2 for certain
312 API endpoints. This OAuth2 authenticator only supports the application-only
315 To authenticate with OAuth2, visit the Twitter developer page and create a new
318 **[https://dev.twitter.com/apps/new](https://dev.twitter.com/apps/new)**
320 This will get you a CONSUMER_KEY and CONSUMER_SECRET.
322 Exchange your CONSUMER_KEY and CONSUMER_SECRET for a bearer token using the
323 oauth2_dance function.
325 Finally, you can use the OAuth2 authenticator and your bearer token to connect
326 to Twitter. In code it goes like this::
329 twitter = Twitter(auth=OAuth2(bearer_token=BEARER_TOKEN))
331 # Now work with Twitter
332 twitter.search.tweets(q='keyword')
338 Python Twitter Tools are released under an MIT License.