README

   1 Python Twitter Tools
   2 ====================
   3
   4 [![Build Status](https://travis-ci.org/sixohsix/twitter.svg)](https://travis-ci.org/sixohsix/twitter)
   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
  64 The Twitter and TwitterStream classes are the key to building your own
  65 Twitter-enabled applications.
  66
  67
  68 The Twitter class
  69 -----------------
  70
  71 The minimalist yet fully featured Twitter API class.
  72
  73 Get RESTful data by accessing members of this class. The result
  74 is decoded python objects (lists and dicts).
  75
  76 The Twitter API is documented at:
  77
  78 **[http://dev.twitter.com/doc](http://dev.twitter.com/doc)**
  79
  80
  81 Examples::
  82
  83 ```python
  84 from twitter import *
  85
  86 # see "Authentication" section below for tokens and keys
  87 t = Twitter(
  88             auth=OAuth(OAUTH_TOKEN, OAUTH_SECRET,
  89                        CONSUMER_KEY, CONSUMER_SECRET)
  90            )
  91
  92 # Get your "home" timeline
  93 t.statuses.home_timeline()
  94
  95 # Get a particular friend's timeline
  96 t.statuses.user_timeline(screen_name="billybob")
  97
  98 # to pass in GET/POST parameters, such as `count`
  99 t.statuses.home_timeline(count=5)
 100
 101 # to pass in the GET/POST parameter `id` you need to use `_id`
 102 t.statuses.oembed(_id=1234567890)
 103
 104 # Update your status
 105 t.statuses.update(
 106     status="Using @sixohsix's sweet Python Twitter Tools.")
 107
 108 # Send a direct message
 109 t.direct_messages.new(
 110     user="billybob",
 111     text="I think yer swell!")
 112
 113 # Get the members of tamtar's list "Things That Are Rad"
 114 t._("tamtar")._("things-that-are-rad").members()
 115
 116 # Note how the magic `_` method can be used to insert data
 117 # into the middle of a call. You can also use replacement:
 118 t.user.list.members(user="tamtar", list="things-that-are-rad")
 119
 120 # An *optional* `_timeout` parameter can also be used for API
 121 # calls which take much more time than normal or Twitter stops
 122 # responding for some reason
 123 t.users.lookup(screen_name=','.join(A_LIST_OF_100_SCREEN_NAMES), _timeout=1)
 124
 125 # Overriding Method: GET/POST
 126 # you should not need to use this method as this library properly
 127 # detects whether GET or POST should be used, Nevertheless
 128 # to force a particular method, use `_method`
 129 t.statuses.oembed(_id=1234567890, _method='GET')
 130 ```
 131
 132 Searching Twitter::
 133
 134 ``` python
 135 # Search for the latest tweets about #pycon
 136 t.search.tweets(q="#pycon")
 137 ```
 138
 139 Using the data returned
 140 -----------------------
 141
 142 Twitter API calls return decoded JSON. This is converted into
 143 a bunch of Python lists, dicts, ints, and strings. For example::
 144
 145 ```python
 146 x = twitter.statuses.home_timeline()
 147
 148 # The first 'tweet' in the timeline
 149 x[0]
 150
 151 # The screen name of the user who wrote the first 'tweet'
 152 x[0]['user']['screen_name']
 153 ```
 154
 155 Getting raw XML data
 156 --------------------
 157
 158 If you prefer to get your Twitter data in XML format, pass
 159 format="xml" to the Twitter object when you instantiate it::
 160
 161 ```python
 162 twitter = Twitter(format="xml")
 163 ```
 164
 165 The output will not be parsed in any way. It will be a raw string
 166 of XML.
 167
 168
 169 The TwitterStream class
 170 -----------------------
 171
 172 The TwitterStream object is an interface to the Twitter Stream API
 173 (stream.twitter.com). This can be used pretty much the same as the
 174 Twitter class except the result of calling a method will be an
 175 iterator that yields objects decoded from the stream. For
 176 example::
 177
 178 ```python
 179 twitter_stream = TwitterStream(auth=UserPassAuth('joe', 'joespassword'))
 180 iterator = twitter_stream.statuses.sample()
 181
 182 for tweet in iterator:
 183     # ...do something with this tweet...
 184 ```
 185
 186 The iterator will yield tweets forever and ever (until the stream
 187 breaks at which point it raises a TwitterHTTPError.)
 188
 189 The `block` parameter controls if the stream is blocking. Default
 190 is blocking (True). When set to False, the iterator will
 191 occasionally yield None when there is no available message.
 192
 193 Per default the ``TwitterStream`` object uses
 194 [public streams](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis/streams/public).
 195 If you want to use one of the other
 196 [streaming APIs](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis), specify the URL
 197 manually:
 198
 199 - [Public streams](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis/streams/public): stream.twitter.com
 200 - [User streams](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis/streams/user): userstream.twitter.com
 201 - [Site streams](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis/streams/site): sitestream.twitter.com
 202
 203 Note that you require the proper
 204 [permissions](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/application-permission-model) to
 205 access these streams. E.g. for direct messages your
 206 [application](https://dev.twitter.com/apps) needs the "Read, Write & Direct
 207 Messages" permission.
 208
 209 The following example demonstrates how to retrieve all new direct messages
 210 from the user stream:
 211
 212 ```python
 213 auth = OAuth(
 214     consumer_key='[your consumer key]',
 215     consumer_secret='[your consumer secret]',
 216     token='[your token]',
 217     token_secret='[your token secret]'
 218 )
 219 twitter_userstream = TwitterStream(auth=auth, domain='userstream.twitter.com')
 220 for msg in twitter_userstream.user():
 221     if 'direct_message' in msg:
 222         print msg['direct_message']['text']
 223 ```
 224
 225 Twitter Response Objects
 226 ------------------------
 227
 228 Response from a Twitter request. Behaves like a list or a string
 229 (depending on requested format) but it has a few other interesting
 230 attributes.
 231
 232 `headers` gives you access to the response headers as an
 233 httplib.HTTPHeaders instance. You can do
 234 `response.headers.getheader('h')` to retrieve a header.
 235
 236 Authentication
 237 --------------
 238
 239 You can authenticate with Twitter in three ways: NoAuth, OAuth, or
 240 UserPassAuth. Get help() on these classes to learn how to use them.
 241
 242 OAuth is probably the most useful.
 243
 244
 245 Working with OAuth
 246 ------------------
 247
 248 Visit the Twitter developer page and create a new application:
 249
 250 **[https://dev.twitter.com/apps/new](https://dev.twitter.com/apps/new)**
 251
 252 This will get you a CONSUMER_KEY and CONSUMER_SECRET.
 253
 254 When users run your application they have to authenticate your app
 255 with their Twitter account. A few HTTP calls to Twitter are required
 256 to do this. Please see the twitter.oauth_dance module to see how this
 257 is done. If you are making a command-line app, you can use the
 258 oauth_dance() function directly.
 259
 260 Performing the "oauth dance" gets you an oauth token and oauth secret
 261 that authenticate the user with Twitter. You should save these for
 262 later so that the user doesn't have to do the oauth dance again.
 263
 264 read_token_file and write_token_file are utility methods to read and
 265 write OAuth token and secret key values. The values are stored as
 266 strings in the file. Not terribly exciting.
 267
 268 Finally, you can use the OAuth authenticator to connect to Twitter. In
 269 code it all goes like this::
 270
 271 ```python
 272 from twitter import *
 273
 274 MY_TWITTER_CREDS = os.path.expanduser('~/.my_app_credentials')
 275 if not os.path.exists(MY_TWITTER_CREDS):
 276     oauth_dance("My App Name", CONSUMER_KEY, CONSUMER_SECRET,
 277                 MY_TWITTER_CREDS)
 278
 279 oauth_token, oauth_secret = read_token_file(MY_TWITTER_CREDS)
 280
 281 twitter = Twitter(auth=OAuth(
 282     oauth_token, oauth_secret, CONSUMER_KEY, CONSUMER_SECRET))
 283
 284 # Now work with Twitter
 285 twitter.statuses.update(status='Hello, world!')
 286 ```
 287
 288
 289 License
 290 =======
 291
 292 Python Twitter Tools are released under an MIT License.