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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 **[https://dev.twitter.com/overview/documentation](https://dev.twitter.com/overview/documentation)**
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.lists.members(owner_screen_name="tamtar", slug="things-that-are-rad")
110 # An *optional* `_timeout` parameter can also be used for API
111 # calls which take much more time than normal or twitter stops
112 # responding for some reason:
114 screen_name=','.join(A_LIST_OF_100_SCREEN_NAMES), _timeout=1)
116 # Overriding Method: GET/POST
117 # you should not need to use this method as this library properly
118 # detects whether GET or POST should be used, Nevertheless
119 # to force a particular method, use `_method`
120 t.statuses.oembed(_id=1234567890, _method='GET')
122 # Send images along with your tweets:
123 # - first just read images from the web or from files the regular way:
124 with open("example.png", "rb") as imagefile:
125 imagedata = imagefile.read()
126 # - then upload medias one by one on Twitter's dedicated server
127 # and collect each one's id:
128 t_up = Twitter(domain='upload.twitter.com',
129 auth=OAuth(token, token_key, con_secret, con_secret_key))
130 id_img1 = t_up.media.upload(media=imagedata)["media_id_string"]
131 id_img2 = t_up.media.upload(media=imagedata)["media_id_string"]
132 # - finally send your tweet with the list of media ids:
133 t.statuses.update(status="PTT ★", media_ids=",".join([id_img1, id_img2]))
135 # Or send a tweet with an image (or set a logo/banner similarily)
136 # using the old deprecated method that will probably disappear some day
137 params = {"media[]": imagedata, "status": "PTT ★"}
138 # Or for an image encoded as base64:
139 params = {"media[]": base64_image, "status": "PTT ★", "_base64": True}
140 t.statuses.update_with_media(**params)
145 # Search for the latest tweets about #pycon
146 t.search.tweets(q="#pycon")
150 Retrying after reaching the API rate limit
151 ------------------------------------------
153 Simply create the `Twitter` instance with the argument `retry=True`, then the
154 HTTP error codes 429, 502, 503 and 504 will cause a retry of the last request.
155 If retry is an integer, it defines the number of retries attempted.
158 Using the data returned
159 -----------------------
161 Twitter API calls return decoded JSON. This is converted into
162 a bunch of Python lists, dicts, ints, and strings. For example:
165 x = twitter.statuses.home_timeline()
167 # The first 'tweet' in the timeline
170 # The screen name of the user who wrote the first 'tweet'
171 x[0]['user']['screen_name']
177 If you prefer to get your Twitter data in XML format, pass
178 format="xml" to the Twitter object when you instantiate it:
181 twitter = Twitter(format="xml")
184 The output will not be parsed in any way. It will be a raw string
188 The TwitterStream class
189 -----------------------
191 The TwitterStream object is an interface to the Twitter Stream
192 API. This can be used pretty much the same as the Twitter class
193 except the result of calling a method will be an iterator that
194 yields objects decoded from the stream. For example::
197 twitter_stream = TwitterStream(auth=OAuth(...))
198 iterator = twitter_stream.statuses.sample()
200 for tweet in iterator:
201 ...do something with this tweet...
204 Per default the ``TwitterStream`` object uses
205 [public streams](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis/streams/public).
206 If you want to use one of the other
207 [streaming APIs](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis), specify the URL
210 - [Public streams](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis/streams/public): stream.twitter.com
211 - [User streams](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis/streams/user): userstream.twitter.com
212 - [Site streams](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis/streams/site): sitestream.twitter.com
214 Note that you require the proper
215 [permissions](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/application-permission-model) to
216 access these streams. E.g. for direct messages your
217 [application](https://dev.twitter.com/apps) needs the "Read, Write & Direct
218 Messages" permission.
220 The following example demonstrates how to retrieve all new direct messages
221 from the user stream:
225 consumer_key='[your consumer key]',
226 consumer_secret='[your consumer secret]',
227 token='[your token]',
228 token_secret='[your token secret]'
230 twitter_userstream = TwitterStream(auth=auth, domain='userstream.twitter.com')
231 for msg in twitter_userstream.user():
232 if 'direct_message' in msg:
233 print msg['direct_message']['text']
236 The iterator will yield until the TCP connection breaks. When the
237 connection breaks, the iterator yields `{'hangup': True}`, and
238 raises `StopIteration` if iterated again.
240 Similarly, if the stream does not produce heartbeats for more than
241 90 seconds, the iterator yields `{'hangup': True,
242 'heartbeat_timeout': True}`, and raises `StopIteration` if
245 The `timeout` parameter controls the maximum time between
246 yields. If it is nonzero, then the iterator will yield either
247 stream data or `{'timeout': True}` within the timeout period. This
248 is useful if you want your program to do other stuff in between
251 The `block` parameter sets the stream to be fully non-blocking. In
252 this mode, the iterator always yields immediately. It returns
253 stream data, or `None`. Note that `timeout` supercedes this
254 argument, so it should also be set `None` to use this mode,
255 and non-blocking can potentially lead to 100% CPU usage.
257 Twitter Response Objects
258 ------------------------
260 Response from a twitter request. Behaves like a list or a string
261 (depending on requested format) but it has a few other interesting
264 `headers` gives you access to the response headers as an
265 httplib.HTTPHeaders instance. You can do
266 `response.headers.get('h')` to retrieve a header.
271 You can authenticate with Twitter in three ways: NoAuth, OAuth, or
272 OAuth2 (app-only). Get help() on these classes to learn how to use them.
274 OAuth and OAuth2 are probably the most useful.
280 Visit the Twitter developer page and create a new application:
282 **[https://dev.twitter.com/apps/new](https://dev.twitter.com/apps/new)**
284 This will get you a CONSUMER_KEY and CONSUMER_SECRET.
286 When users run your application they have to authenticate your app
287 with their Twitter account. A few HTTP calls to twitter are required
288 to do this. Please see the twitter.oauth_dance module to see how this
289 is done. If you are making a command-line app, you can use the
290 oauth_dance() function directly.
292 Performing the "oauth dance" gets you an ouath token and oauth secret
293 that authenticate the user with Twitter. You should save these for
294 later so that the user doesn't have to do the oauth dance again.
296 read_token_file and write_token_file are utility methods to read and
297 write OAuth token and secret key values. The values are stored as
298 strings in the file. Not terribly exciting.
300 Finally, you can use the OAuth authenticator to connect to Twitter. In
301 code it all goes like this:
304 from twitter import *
306 MY_TWITTER_CREDS = os.path.expanduser('~/.my_app_credentials')
307 if not os.path.exists(MY_TWITTER_CREDS):
308 oauth_dance("My App Name", CONSUMER_KEY, CONSUMER_SECRET,
311 oauth_token, oauth_secret = read_token_file(MY_TWITTER_CREDS)
313 twitter = Twitter(auth=OAuth(
314 oauth_token, oauth_token_secret, CONSUMER_KEY, CONSUMER_SECRET))
316 # Now work with Twitter
317 twitter.statuses.update(status='Hello, world!')
323 Twitter only supports the application-only flow of OAuth2 for certain
324 API endpoints. This OAuth2 authenticator only supports the application-only
327 To authenticate with OAuth2, visit the Twitter developer page and create a new
330 **[https://dev.twitter.com/apps/new](https://dev.twitter.com/apps/new)**
332 This will get you a CONSUMER_KEY and CONSUMER_SECRET.
334 Exchange your CONSUMER_KEY and CONSUMER_SECRET for a bearer token using the
335 oauth2_dance function.
337 Finally, you can use the OAuth2 authenticator and your bearer token to connect
338 to Twitter. In code it goes like this::
341 twitter = Twitter(auth=OAuth2(bearer_token=BEARER_TOKEN))
343 # Now work with Twitter
344 twitter.search.tweets(q='keyword')
350 Python Twitter Tools are released under an MIT License.