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