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  * run `twitterbot -h` for IRC bot help
  18  * visit http://mike.verdone.ca/twitter for more info
  19
  20
  21
  22 twitter - The Command-Line Tool
  23 -------------------------------
  24
  25 The command-line tool currently supports the following things:
  26
  27  * view your friends' recent tweets
  28  * view your recent replies
  29  * view the public timeline
  30  * follow and unfollow (leave) friends
  31  * view tweets from lists
  32  * various output formats for tweet information
  33  * read your username and password from a config file
  34
  35 The bottom line: type `twitter`, receive tweets.
  36
  37
  38
  39 twitterbot - The IRC Bot
  40 ------------------------
  41
  42 The IRC bot is associated with a twitter account (either your own account or an
  43 account you create for the bot). The bot announces all tweets from friends
  44 it is following. It can be made to follow or leave friends through IRC /msg
  45 commands.
  46
  47
  48 twitter-log
  49 -----------
  50
  51 `twitter-log` is a simple command-line tool that dumps all public
  52 tweets from a given user in a simple text format. It is useful to get
  53 a complete offsite backup of all your tweets. Run `twitter-log` and
  54 read the instructions.
  55
  56
  57 Programming with the Twitter api classes
  58 ========================================
  59
  60
  61 The Twitter and TwitterStream classes are the key to building your own
  62 Twitter-enabled applications.
  63
  64
  65 The Twitter class
  66 -----------------
  67
  68 The minimalist yet fully featured Twitter API class.
  69
  70 Get RESTful data by accessing members of this class. The result
  71 is decoded python objects (lists and dicts).
  72
  73 The Twitter API is documented at:
  74
  75   http://dev.twitter.com/doc
  76
  77
  78 Examples::
  79
  80     t = Twitter(
  81         auth=OAuth(token, token_key, con_secret, con_secret_key)))
  82
  83     # Get the public timeline
  84     t.statuses.public_timeline()
  85
  86     # Get a particular friend's timeline
  87     t.statuses.friends_timeline(id="billybob")
  88
  89     # Also supported (but totally weird)
  90     t.statuses.friends_timeline.billybob()
  91
  92     # Update your status
  93     t.statuses.update(
  94         status="Using @sixohsix's sweet Python Twitter Tools.")
  95
  96     # Send a direct message
  97     t.direct_messages.new(
  98         user="billybob",
  99         text="I think yer swell!")
 100
 101     # Get the members of tamtar's list "Things That Are Rad"
 102     t._("tamtar")._("things-that-are-rad").members()
 103
 104     # Note how the magic `_` method can be used to insert data
 105     # into the middle of a call. You can also use replacement:
 106     t.user.list.members(user="tamtar", list="things-that-are-rad")
 107
 108
 109 Searching Twitter::
 110
 111     twitter_search = Twitter(domain="search.twitter.com")
 112
 113     # Find the latest search trends
 114     twitter_search.trends()
 115
 116     # Search for the latest News on #gaza
 117     twitter_search.search(q="#gaza")
 118
 119
 120 Using the data returned
 121 -----------------------
 122
 123 Twitter API calls return decoded JSON. This is converted into
 124 a bunch of Python lists, dicts, ints, and strings. For example::
 125
 126     x = twitter.statuses.public_timeline()
 127
 128     # The first 'tweet' in the timeline
 129     x[0]
 130
 131     # The screen name of the user who wrote the first 'tweet'
 132     x[0]['user']['screen_name']
 133
 134
 135 Getting raw XML data
 136 --------------------
 137
 138 If you prefer to get your Twitter data in XML format, pass
 139 format="xml" to the Twitter object when you instantiate it::
 140
 141     twitter = Twitter(format="xml")
 142
 143 The output will not be parsed in any way. It will be a raw string
 144 of XML.
 145
 146
 147 The TwitterStream class
 148 -----------------------
 149
 150 The TwitterStream object is an interface to the Twitter Stream API
 151 (stream.twitter.com). This can be used pretty much the same as the
 152 Twitter class except the result of calling a method will be an
 153 iterator that yields objects decoded from the stream. For
 154 example::
 155
 156     twitter_stream = TwitterStream(auth=UserPassAuth('joe', 'joespassword'))
 157     iterator = twitter_stream.statuses.sample()
 158
 159     for tweet in iterator:
 160         ...do something with this tweet...
 161
 162 The iterator will yield tweets forever and ever (until the stream
 163 breaks at which point it raises a TwitterHTTPError.)
 164
 165 The `block` parameter controls if the stream is blocking. Default
 166 is blocking (True). When set to False, the iterator will
 167 occasionally yield None when there is no available message.
 168
 169 Twitter Response Objects
 170 ------------------------
 171
 172 Response from a twitter request. Behaves like a list or a string
 173 (depending on requested format) but it has a few other interesting
 174 attributes.
 175
 176 `headers` gives you access to the response headers as an
 177 httplib.HTTPHeaders instance. You can do
 178 `response.headers.getheader('h')` to retrieve a header.
 179
 180 Authentication
 181 --------------
 182
 183 You can authenticate with Twitter in three ways: NoAuth, OAuth, or
 184 UserPassAuth. Get help() on these classes to learn how to use them.
 185
 186 OAuth is probably the most useful.
 187
 188
 189 Working with OAuth
 190 ------------------
 191
 192 Visit the Twitter developer page and create a new application:
 193
 194     https://dev.twitter.com/apps/new
 195
 196 This will get you a CONSUMER_KEY and CONSUMER_SECRET.
 197
 198 When users run your application they have to authenticate your app
 199 with their Twitter account. A few HTTP calls to twitter are required
 200 to do this. Please see the twitter.oauth_dance module to see how this
 201 is done. If you are making a command-line app, you can use the
 202 oauth_dance() function directly.
 203
 204 Performing the "oauth dance" gets you an ouath token and oauth secret
 205 that authenticate the user with Twitter. You should save these for
 206 later so that the user doesn't have to do the oauth dance again.
 207
 208 read_token_file and write_token_file are utility methods to read and
 209 write OAuth token and secret key values. The values are stored as
 210 strings in the file. Not terribly exciting.
 211
 212 Finally, you can use the OAuth authenticator to connect to Twitter. In
 213 code it all goes like this::
 214
 215     MY_TWITTER_CREDS = os.path.expanduser('~/.my_app_credentials')
 216     if not os.path.exists(MY_TWITTER_CREDS):
 217         oauth_dance("My App Name", CONSUMER_KEY, CONSUMER_SECRET,
 218                     MY_TWITTER_CREDS)
 219
 220     oauth_token, oauth_secret = read_token_file(MY_TWITTER_CREDS)
 221
 222     twitter = Twitter(auth=OAuth(
 223         oauth_token, oauth_token_secret, CONSUMER_KEY, CONSUMER_SECRET))
 224
 225     # Now work with Twitter
 226     twitter.statuses.update('Hello, world!')
 227
 228
 229
 230 License
 231 =======
 232
 233 Python Twitter Tools are released under an MIT License.