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