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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 **[http://dev.twitter.com/doc](http://dev.twitter.com/doc)**
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._("tamtar")._("things-that-are-rad").members()
110 # Note how the magic `_` method can be used to insert data
111 # into the middle of a call. You can also use replacement:
112 t.user.list.members(user="tamtar", list="things-that-are-rad")
114 # An *optional* `_timeout` parameter can also be used for API
115 # calls which take much more time than normal or twitter stops
116 # responding for some reason:
118 screen_name=','.join(A_LIST_OF_100_SCREEN_NAMES), _timeout=1)
120 # Overriding Method: GET/POST
121 # you should not need to use this method as this library properly
122 # detects whether GET or POST should be used, Nevertheless
123 # to force a particular method, use `_method`
124 t.statuses.oembed(_id=1234567890, _method='GET')
126 # Send a tweet with an image included (or set your banner or logo similarily)
127 # by just reading your image from the web or a file in a string:
128 with open("example.png", "rb") as imagefile:
129 params = {"media[]": imagefile.read(), "status": "PTT"}
130 t.statuses.update_with_media(**params)
132 # Or by sending a base64 encoded image:
133 params = {"media[]": base64_image, "status": "PTT", "_base64": True}
134 t.statuses.update_with_media(**params)
139 # Search for the latest tweets about #pycon
140 t.search.tweets(q="#pycon")
144 Retrying after reaching the API rate limit
145 ------------------------------------------
147 Simply create the `Twitter` instance with the argument `retry=True`, then the
148 HTTP error codes 429, 502, 503 and 504 will cause a retry of the last request.
151 Using the data returned
152 -----------------------
154 Twitter API calls return decoded JSON. This is converted into
155 a bunch of Python lists, dicts, ints, and strings. For example:
158 x = twitter.statuses.home_timeline()
160 # The first 'tweet' in the timeline
163 # The screen name of the user who wrote the first 'tweet'
164 x[0]['user']['screen_name']
170 If you prefer to get your Twitter data in XML format, pass
171 format="xml" to the Twitter object when you instantiate it:
174 twitter = Twitter(format="xml")
177 The output will not be parsed in any way. It will be a raw string
181 The TwitterStream class
182 -----------------------
184 The TwitterStream object is an interface to the Twitter Stream
185 API. This can be used pretty much the same as the Twitter class
186 except the result of calling a method will be an iterator that
187 yields objects decoded from the stream. For example::
190 twitter_stream = TwitterStream(auth=OAuth(...))
191 iterator = twitter_stream.statuses.sample()
193 for tweet in iterator:
194 ...do something with this tweet...
197 Per default the ``TwitterStream`` object uses
198 [public streams](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis/streams/public).
199 If you want to use one of the other
200 [streaming APIs](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis), specify the URL
203 - [Public streams](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis/streams/public): stream.twitter.com
204 - [User streams](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis/streams/user): userstream.twitter.com
205 - [Site streams](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis/streams/site): sitestream.twitter.com
207 Note that you require the proper
208 [permissions](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/application-permission-model) to
209 access these streams. E.g. for direct messages your
210 [application](https://dev.twitter.com/apps) needs the "Read, Write & Direct
211 Messages" permission.
213 The following example demonstrates how to retrieve all new direct messages
214 from the user stream:
218 consumer_key='[your consumer key]',
219 consumer_secret='[your consumer secret]',
220 token='[your token]',
221 token_secret='[your token secret]'
223 twitter_userstream = TwitterStream(auth=auth, domain='userstream.twitter.com')
224 for msg in twitter_userstream.user():
225 if 'direct_message' in msg:
226 print msg['direct_message']['text']
229 The iterator will yield until the TCP connection breaks. When the
230 connection breaks, the iterator yields `{'hangup': True}`, and
231 raises `StopIteration` if iterated again.
233 Similarly, if the stream does not produce heartbeats for more than
234 90 seconds, the iterator yields `{'hangup': True,
235 'heartbeat_timeout': True}`, and raises `StopIteration` if
238 The `timeout` parameter controls the maximum time between
239 yields. If it is nonzero, then the iterator will yield either
240 stream data or `{'timeout': True}` within the timeout period. This
241 is useful if you want your program to do other stuff in between
244 The `block` parameter sets the stream to be fully non-blocking. In
245 this mode, the iterator always yields immediately. It returns
246 stream data, or `None`. Note that `timeout` supercedes this
247 argument, so it should also be set `None` to use this mode,
248 and non-blocking can potentially lead to 100% CPU usage.
250 Twitter Response Objects
251 ------------------------
253 Response from a twitter request. Behaves like a list or a string
254 (depending on requested format) but it has a few other interesting
257 `headers` gives you access to the response headers as an
258 httplib.HTTPHeaders instance. You can do
259 `response.headers.get('h')` to retrieve a header.
264 You can authenticate with Twitter in three ways: NoAuth, OAuth, or
265 OAuth2 (app-only). Get help() on these classes to learn how to use them.
267 OAuth and OAuth2 are probably the most useful.
273 Visit the Twitter developer page and create a new application:
275 **[https://dev.twitter.com/apps/new](https://dev.twitter.com/apps/new)**
277 This will get you a CONSUMER_KEY and CONSUMER_SECRET.
279 When users run your application they have to authenticate your app
280 with their Twitter account. A few HTTP calls to twitter are required
281 to do this. Please see the twitter.oauth_dance module to see how this
282 is done. If you are making a command-line app, you can use the
283 oauth_dance() function directly.
285 Performing the "oauth dance" gets you an ouath token and oauth secret
286 that authenticate the user with Twitter. You should save these for
287 later so that the user doesn't have to do the oauth dance again.
289 read_token_file and write_token_file are utility methods to read and
290 write OAuth token and secret key values. The values are stored as
291 strings in the file. Not terribly exciting.
293 Finally, you can use the OAuth authenticator to connect to Twitter. In
294 code it all goes like this:
297 from twitter import *
299 MY_TWITTER_CREDS = os.path.expanduser('~/.my_app_credentials')
300 if not os.path.exists(MY_TWITTER_CREDS):
301 oauth_dance("My App Name", CONSUMER_KEY, CONSUMER_SECRET,
304 oauth_token, oauth_secret = read_token_file(MY_TWITTER_CREDS)
306 twitter = Twitter(auth=OAuth(
307 oauth_token, oauth_token_secret, CONSUMER_KEY, CONSUMER_SECRET))
309 # Now work with Twitter
310 twitter.statuses.update(status='Hello, world!')
316 Twitter only supports the application-only flow of OAuth2 for certain
317 API endpoints. This OAuth2 authenticator only supports the application-only
320 To authenticate with OAuth2, visit the Twitter developer page and create a new
323 **[https://dev.twitter.com/apps/new](https://dev.twitter.com/apps/new)**
325 This will get you a CONSUMER_KEY and CONSUMER_SECRET.
327 Exchange your CONSUMER_KEY and CONSUMER_SECRET for a bearer token using the
328 oauth2_dance function.
330 Finally, you can use the OAuth2 authenticator and your bearer token to connect
331 to Twitter. In code it goes like this::
334 twitter = Twitter(auth=OAuth2(bearer_token=BEARER_TOKEN))
336 # Now work with Twitter
337 twitter.search.tweets(q='keyword')
343 Python Twitter Tools are released under an MIT License.