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 # Send a tweet with an image included (or set your banner or logo similarily)
 132 # - by just reading your image from the web or a file in a string:
 133 with open("example.png", "rb") as imagefile:
 134     params = {"media[]": imagefile.read(), "status": "PTT"}
 135 t.statuses.update_with_media(**params)
 136 # - or by sending a base64 encoded image:
 137 params = {"media[]": base64_image, "status": "PTT", "_base64": True}
 138 t.statuses.update_with_media(**params)
 139 ```
 140
 141 Searching Twitter::
 142
 143 ``` python
 144 # Search for the latest tweets about #pycon
 145 t.search.tweets(q="#pycon")
 146 ```
 147
 148 Using the data returned
 149 -----------------------
 150
 151 Twitter API calls return decoded JSON. This is converted into
 152 a bunch of Python lists, dicts, ints, and strings. For example::
 153
 154 ```python
 155 x = twitter.statuses.home_timeline()
 156
 157 # The first 'tweet' in the timeline
 158 x[0]
 159
 160 # The screen name of the user who wrote the first 'tweet'
 161 x[0]['user']['screen_name']
 162 ```
 163
 164 Getting raw XML data
 165 --------------------
 166
 167 If you prefer to get your Twitter data in XML format, pass
 168 format="xml" to the Twitter object when you instantiate it::
 169
 170 ```python
 171 twitter = Twitter(format="xml")
 172 ```
 173
 174 The output will not be parsed in any way. It will be a raw string
 175 of XML.
 176
 177
 178 The TwitterStream class
 179 -----------------------
 180
 181 The TwitterStream object is an interface to the Twitter Stream API
 182 (stream.twitter.com). This can be used pretty much the same as the
 183 Twitter class except the result of calling a method will be an
 184 iterator that yields objects decoded from the stream. For
 185 example::
 186
 187 ```python
 188 twitter_stream = TwitterStream(auth=UserPassAuth('joe', 'joespassword'))
 189 iterator = twitter_stream.statuses.sample()
 190
 191 for tweet in iterator:
 192     # ...do something with this tweet...
 193 ```
 194
 195 The iterator will yield tweets forever and ever (until the stream
 196 breaks at which point it raises a TwitterHTTPError.)
 197
 198 The `block` parameter controls if the stream is blocking. Default
 199 is blocking (True). When set to False, the iterator will
 200 occasionally yield None when there is no available message.
 201
 202 Per default the ``TwitterStream`` object uses
 203 [public streams](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis/streams/public).
 204 If you want to use one of the other
 205 [streaming APIs](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis), specify the URL
 206 manually:
 207
 208 - [Public streams](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis/streams/public): stream.twitter.com
 209 - [User streams](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis/streams/user): userstream.twitter.com
 210 - [Site streams](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis/streams/site): sitestream.twitter.com
 211
 212 Note that you require the proper
 213 [permissions](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/application-permission-model) to
 214 access these streams. E.g. for direct messages your
 215 [application](https://dev.twitter.com/apps) needs the "Read, Write & Direct
 216 Messages" permission.
 217
 218 The following example demonstrates how to retrieve all new direct messages
 219 from the user stream:
 220
 221 ```python
 222 auth = OAuth(
 223     consumer_key='[your consumer key]',
 224     consumer_secret='[your consumer secret]',
 225     token='[your token]',
 226     token_secret='[your token secret]'
 227 )
 228 twitter_userstream = TwitterStream(auth=auth, domain='userstream.twitter.com')
 229 for msg in twitter_userstream.user():
 230     if 'direct_message' in msg:
 231         print msg['direct_message']['text']
 232 ```
 233
 234 Twitter Response Objects
 235 ------------------------
 236
 237 Response from a Twitter request. Behaves like a list or a string
 238 (depending on requested format) but it has a few other interesting
 239 attributes.
 240
 241 `headers` gives you access to the response headers as an
 242 httplib.HTTPHeaders instance. You can do
 243 `response.headers.getheader('h')` to retrieve a header.
 244
 245 Authentication
 246 --------------
 247
 248 You can authenticate with Twitter in three ways: NoAuth, OAuth, or
 249 UserPassAuth. Get help() on these classes to learn how to use them.
 250
 251 OAuth is probably the most useful.
 252
 253
 254 Working with OAuth
 255 ------------------
 256
 257 Visit the Twitter developer page and create a new application:
 258
 259 **[https://dev.twitter.com/apps/new](https://dev.twitter.com/apps/new)**
 260
 261 This will get you a CONSUMER_KEY and CONSUMER_SECRET.
 262
 263 When users run your application they have to authenticate your app
 264 with their Twitter account. A few HTTP calls to Twitter are required
 265 to do this. Please see the twitter.oauth_dance module to see how this
 266 is done. If you are making a command-line app, you can use the
 267 oauth_dance() function directly.
 268
 269 Performing the "oauth dance" gets you an oauth token and oauth secret
 270 that authenticate the user with Twitter. You should save these for
 271 later so that the user doesn't have to do the oauth dance again.
 272
 273 read_token_file and write_token_file are utility methods to read and
 274 write OAuth token and secret key values. The values are stored as
 275 strings in the file. Not terribly exciting.
 276
 277 Finally, you can use the OAuth authenticator to connect to Twitter. In
 278 code it all goes like this::
 279
 280 ```python
 281 from twitter import *
 282
 283 MY_TWITTER_CREDS = os.path.expanduser('~/.my_app_credentials')
 284 if not os.path.exists(MY_TWITTER_CREDS):
 285     oauth_dance("My App Name", CONSUMER_KEY, CONSUMER_SECRET,
 286                 MY_TWITTER_CREDS)
 287
 288 oauth_token, oauth_secret = read_token_file(MY_TWITTER_CREDS)
 289
 290 twitter = Twitter(auth=OAuth(
 291     oauth_token, oauth_secret, CONSUMER_KEY, CONSUMER_SECRET))
 292
 293 # Now work with Twitter
 294 twitter.statuses.update(status='Hello, world!')
 295 ```
 296
 297
 298 License
 299 =======
 300
 301 Python Twitter Tools are released under an MIT License.