Python Twitter Tools
====================
-[![Build Status](https://travis-ci.org/sixohsix/twitter.svg)](https://travis-ci.org/sixohsix/twitter)
+[![Build Status](https://travis-ci.org/sixohsix/twitter.svg)](https://travis-ci.org/sixohsix/twitter) [![Coverage Status](https://coveralls.io/repos/sixohsix/twitter/badge.png?branch=master)](https://coveralls.io/r/sixohsix/twitter?branch=master)
The Minimalist Twitter API for Python is a Python API for Twitter,
everyone's favorite Web 2.0 Facebook-style status updater for people
on the go.
-Also included is a twitter command-line tool for getting your friends'
+Also included is a Twitter command-line tool for getting your friends'
tweets and setting your own tweet from the safety and security of your
favorite shell and an IRC bot that can announce Twitter updates to an
IRC channel.
For more information, after installing the `twitter` package:
- * import the `twitter` package and run help() on it
+ * import the `twitter` package and run `help()` on it
* run `twitter -h` for command-line tool help
-
twitter - The Command-Line Tool
-------------------------------
The bottom line: type `twitter`, receive tweets.
-
-
twitterbot - The IRC Bot
------------------------
-The IRC bot is associated with a twitter account (either your own account or an
+The IRC bot is associated with a Twitter account (either your own account or an
account you create for the bot). The bot announces all tweets from friends
it is following. It can be made to follow or leave friends through IRC /msg
commands.
-twitter-log
------------
+`twitter-log`
+-------------
`twitter-log` is a simple command-line tool that dumps all public
tweets from a given user in a simple text format. It is useful to get
a complete offsite backup of all your tweets. Run `twitter-log` and
read the instructions.
-twitter-archiver and twitter-follow
------------------------------------
+`twitter-archiver` and `twitter-follow`
+---------------------------------------
twitter-archiver will log all the tweets posted by any user since they
started posting. twitter-follow will print a list of all of all the
followers of a user (or all the users that user follows).
-Programming with the Twitter api classes
+Programming with the Twitter API classes
========================================
-
-The Twitter and TwitterStream classes are the key to building your own
+The `Twitter` and `TwitterStream` classes are the key to building your own
Twitter-enabled applications.
-The Twitter class
------------------
+The `Twitter` class
+-------------------
The minimalist yet fully featured Twitter API class.
The Twitter API is documented at:
-**[http://dev.twitter.com/doc](http://dev.twitter.com/doc)**
-
+**[https://dev.twitter.com/overview/documentation](https://dev.twitter.com/overview/documentation)**
-Examples::
+Examples:
```python
from twitter import *
-# see "Authentication" section below for tokens and keys
t = Twitter(
- auth=OAuth(OAUTH_TOKEN, OAUTH_SECRET,
- CONSUMER_KEY, CONSUMER_SECRET)
- )
+ auth=OAuth(token, token_key, con_secret, con_secret_key))
# Get your "home" timeline
t.statuses.home_timeline()
text="I think yer swell!")
# Get the members of tamtar's list "Things That Are Rad"
-t._("tamtar")._("things-that-are-rad").members()
-
-# Note how the magic `_` method can be used to insert data
-# into the middle of a call. You can also use replacement:
-t.user.list.members(user="tamtar", list="things-that-are-rad")
+t.lists.members(owner_screen_name="tamtar", slug="things-that-are-rad")
# An *optional* `_timeout` parameter can also be used for API
-# calls which take much more time than normal or Twitter stops
-# responding for some reason
-t.users.lookup(screen_name=','.join(A_LIST_OF_100_SCREEN_NAMES), _timeout=1)
+# calls which take much more time than normal or twitter stops
+# responding for some reason:
+t.users.lookup(
+ screen_name=','.join(A_LIST_OF_100_SCREEN_NAMES), _timeout=1)
# Overriding Method: GET/POST
# you should not need to use this method as this library properly
# to force a particular method, use `_method`
t.statuses.oembed(_id=1234567890, _method='GET')
-# Send a tweet with an image included (or set your banner or logo similarily)
-# - by just reading your image from the web or a file in a string:
+# Send images along with your tweets:
+# - first just read images from the web or from files the regular way:
with open("example.png", "rb") as imagefile:
- params = {"media[]": imagefile.read(), "status": "PTT"}
-t.statuses.update_with_media(**params)
-# - or by sending a base64 encoded image:
-params = {"media[]": base64_image, "status": "PTT", "_base64": True}
+ imagedata = imagefile.read()
+# - then upload medias one by one on Twitter's dedicated server
+# and collect each one's id:
+t_up = Twitter(domain='upload.twitter.com',
+ auth=OAuth(token, token_key, con_secret, con_secret_key))
+id_img1 = t_up.media.upload(media=imagedata)["media_id_string"]
+id_img2 = t_up.media.upload(media=imagedata)["media_id_string"]
+# - finally send your tweet with the list of media ids:
+t.statuses.update(status="PTT ★", media_ids=",".join([id_img1, id_img2]))
+
+# Or send a tweet with an image (or set a logo/banner similarily)
+# using the old deprecated method that will probably disappear some day
+params = {"media[]": imagedata, "status": "PTT ★"}
+# Or for an image encoded as base64:
+params = {"media[]": base64_image, "status": "PTT ★", "_base64": True}
t.statuses.update_with_media(**params)
```
-Searching Twitter::
-
-``` python
+Searching Twitter:
+```python
# Search for the latest tweets about #pycon
t.search.tweets(q="#pycon")
```
+
+Retrying after reaching the API rate limit
+------------------------------------------
+
+Simply create the `Twitter` instance with the argument `retry=True`, then the
+HTTP error codes `429`, `502`, `503`, and `504` will cause a retry of the last
+request.
+
+If `retry` is an integer, it defines the maximum number of retry attempts.
+
+
Using the data returned
-----------------------
Twitter API calls return decoded JSON. This is converted into
-a bunch of Python lists, dicts, ints, and strings. For example::
+a bunch of Python lists, dicts, ints, and strings. For example:
```python
x = twitter.statuses.home_timeline()
--------------------
If you prefer to get your Twitter data in XML format, pass
-format="xml" to the Twitter object when you instantiate it::
+`format="xml"` to the `Twitter` object when you instantiate it:
```python
twitter = Twitter(format="xml")
The output will not be parsed in any way. It will be a raw string
of XML.
+The `TwitterStream` class
+-------------------------
-The TwitterStream class
------------------------
-
-The TwitterStream object is an interface to the Twitter Stream API
-(stream.twitter.com). This can be used pretty much the same as the
-Twitter class except the result of calling a method will be an
-iterator that yields objects decoded from the stream. For
-example::
+The `TwitterStream` object is an interface to the Twitter Stream
+API. This can be used pretty much the same as the `Twitter` class,
+except the result of calling a method will be an iterator that
+yields objects decoded from the stream. For example::
```python
-twitter_stream = TwitterStream(auth=UserPassAuth('joe', 'joespassword'))
+twitter_stream = TwitterStream(auth=OAuth(...))
iterator = twitter_stream.statuses.sample()
for tweet in iterator:
- # ...do something with this tweet...
+ ...do something with this tweet...
```
-The iterator will yield tweets forever and ever (until the stream
-breaks at which point it raises a TwitterHTTPError.)
-
-The `block` parameter controls if the stream is blocking. Default
-is blocking (True). When set to False, the iterator will
-occasionally yield None when there is no available message.
-
-Per default the ``TwitterStream`` object uses
+Per default the `TwitterStream` object uses
[public streams](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis/streams/public).
If you want to use one of the other
[streaming APIs](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis), specify the URL
Note that you require the proper
[permissions](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/application-permission-model) to
-access these streams. E.g. for direct messages your
+access these streams. (E.g., for direct messages, your
[application](https://dev.twitter.com/apps) needs the "Read, Write & Direct
-Messages" permission.
+Messages" permission.)
The following example demonstrates how to retrieve all new direct messages
from the user stream:
print msg['direct_message']['text']
```
-Twitter Response Objects
-------------------------
+The iterator will `yield` until the TCP connection breaks. When the
+connection breaks, the iterator yields `{'hangup': True}` (and
+raises `StopIteration` if iterated again).
+
+Similarly, if the stream does not produce heartbeats for more than
+90 seconds, the iterator yields `{'hangup': True,
+'heartbeat_timeout': True}` (and raises `StopIteration` if
+iterated again).
+
+The `timeout` parameter controls the maximum time between
+yields. If it is nonzero, then the iterator will yield either
+stream data or `{'timeout': True}` within the timeout period. This
+is useful if you want your program to do other stuff in between
+waiting for tweets.
+
+The `block` parameter sets the stream to be fully non-blocking.
+In this mode, the iterator always yields immediately. It returns
+stream data, or `None`.
+
+Note that `timeout` supercedes this argument, so it should also be
+set `None` to use this mode, and non-blocking can potentially lead
+to 100% CPU usage.
+
+Twitter `Response` Objects
+--------------------------
Response from a Twitter request. Behaves like a list or a string
-(depending on requested format) but it has a few other interesting
+(depending on requested format), but it has a few other interesting
attributes.
`headers` gives you access to the response headers as an
-httplib.HTTPHeaders instance. You can do
-`response.headers.getheader('h')` to retrieve a header.
+`httplib.HTTPHeaders` instance. Use `response.headers.get('h')`
+to retrieve a header.
Authentication
--------------
You can authenticate with Twitter in three ways: NoAuth, OAuth, or
-UserPassAuth. Get help() on these classes to learn how to use them.
+OAuth2 (app-only). Get `help()` on these classes to learn how to use them.
-OAuth is probably the most useful.
+OAuth and OAuth2 are probably the most useful.
Working with OAuth
**[https://dev.twitter.com/apps/new](https://dev.twitter.com/apps/new)**
-This will get you a CONSUMER_KEY and CONSUMER_SECRET.
+This will get you a `CONSUMER_KEY` and `CONSUMER_SECRET`.
When users run your application they have to authenticate your app
with their Twitter account. A few HTTP calls to Twitter are required
-to do this. Please see the twitter.oauth_dance module to see how this
+to do this. Please see the `twitter.oauth_dance` module to see how this
is done. If you are making a command-line app, you can use the
-oauth_dance() function directly.
+`oauth_dance()` function directly.
Performing the "oauth dance" gets you an oauth token and oauth secret
that authenticate the user with Twitter. You should save these for
-later so that the user doesn't have to do the oauth dance again.
+later, so that the user doesn't have to do the oauth dance again.
-read_token_file and write_token_file are utility methods to read and
-write OAuth token and secret key values. The values are stored as
+`read_token_file` and `write_token_file` are utility methods to read and
+write OAuth `token` and `secret` key values. The values are stored as
strings in the file. Not terribly exciting.
-Finally, you can use the OAuth authenticator to connect to Twitter. In
-code it all goes like this::
+Finally, you can use the `OAuth` authenticator to connect to Twitter. In
+code it all goes like this:
```python
from twitter import *
oauth_token, oauth_secret = read_token_file(MY_TWITTER_CREDS)
twitter = Twitter(auth=OAuth(
- oauth_token, oauth_secret, CONSUMER_KEY, CONSUMER_SECRET))
+ oauth_token, oauth_token_secret, CONSUMER_KEY, CONSUMER_SECRET))
# Now work with Twitter
twitter.statuses.update(status='Hello, world!')
```
+Working with `OAuth2`
+---------------------
+
+Twitter only supports the application-only flow of OAuth2 for certain
+API endpoints. This OAuth2 authenticator only supports the application-only
+flow right now.
+
+To authenticate with OAuth2, visit the Twitter developer page and create a new
+application:
+
+**[https://dev.twitter.com/apps/new](https://dev.twitter.com/apps/new)**
+
+This will get you a `CONSUMER_KEY` and `CONSUMER_SECRET`.
+
+Exchange your `CONSUMER_KEY` and `CONSUMER_SECRET` for a bearer token using the
+`oauth2_dance` function.
+
+Finally, you can use the `OAuth2` authenticator and your bearer token to connect
+to Twitter. In code it goes like this::
+
+```python
+twitter = Twitter(auth=OAuth2(bearer_token=BEARER_TOKEN))
+
+# Now work with Twitter
+twitter.search.tweets(q='keyword')
+```
License
=======