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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 a tweet with an image included (or set your banner or logo similarily)
123 # by just reading your image from the web or a file in a string:
125 with open("example.png", "rb") as imagefile:
126 params = {"media[]": imagefile.read(), "status": status}
127 t.statuses.update_with_media(**params)
129 # Or by sending a base64 encoded image:
130 params = {"media[]": base64_image, "status": status, "_base64": True}
131 t.statuses.update_with_media(**params)
136 # Search for the latest tweets about #pycon
137 t.search.tweets(q="#pycon")
141 Retrying after reaching the API rate limit
142 ------------------------------------------
144 Simply create the `Twitter` instance with the argument `retry=True`, then the
145 HTTP error codes 429, 502, 503 and 504 will cause a retry of the last request.
146 If retry is an integer, it defines the number of retries attempted.
149 Using the data returned
150 -----------------------
152 Twitter API calls return decoded JSON. This is converted into
153 a bunch of Python lists, dicts, ints, and strings. For example:
156 x = twitter.statuses.home_timeline()
158 # The first 'tweet' in the timeline
161 # The screen name of the user who wrote the first 'tweet'
162 x[0]['user']['screen_name']
168 If you prefer to get your Twitter data in XML format, pass
169 format="xml" to the Twitter object when you instantiate it:
172 twitter = Twitter(format="xml")
175 The output will not be parsed in any way. It will be a raw string
179 The TwitterStream class
180 -----------------------
182 The TwitterStream object is an interface to the Twitter Stream
183 API. This can be used pretty much the same as the Twitter class
184 except the result of calling a method will be an iterator that
185 yields objects decoded from the stream. For example::
188 twitter_stream = TwitterStream(auth=OAuth(...))
189 iterator = twitter_stream.statuses.sample()
191 for tweet in iterator:
192 ...do something with this tweet...
195 Per default the ``TwitterStream`` object uses
196 [public streams](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis/streams/public).
197 If you want to use one of the other
198 [streaming APIs](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis), specify the URL
201 - [Public streams](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis/streams/public): stream.twitter.com
202 - [User streams](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis/streams/user): userstream.twitter.com
203 - [Site streams](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis/streams/site): sitestream.twitter.com
205 Note that you require the proper
206 [permissions](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/application-permission-model) to
207 access these streams. E.g. for direct messages your
208 [application](https://dev.twitter.com/apps) needs the "Read, Write & Direct
209 Messages" permission.
211 The following example demonstrates how to retrieve all new direct messages
212 from the user stream:
216 consumer_key='[your consumer key]',
217 consumer_secret='[your consumer secret]',
218 token='[your token]',
219 token_secret='[your token secret]'
221 twitter_userstream = TwitterStream(auth=auth, domain='userstream.twitter.com')
222 for msg in twitter_userstream.user():
223 if 'direct_message' in msg:
224 print msg['direct_message']['text']
227 The iterator will yield until the TCP connection breaks. When the
228 connection breaks, the iterator yields `{'hangup': True}`, and
229 raises `StopIteration` if iterated again.
231 Similarly, if the stream does not produce heartbeats for more than
232 90 seconds, the iterator yields `{'hangup': True,
233 'heartbeat_timeout': True}`, and raises `StopIteration` if
236 The `timeout` parameter controls the maximum time between
237 yields. If it is nonzero, then the iterator will yield either
238 stream data or `{'timeout': True}` within the timeout period. This
239 is useful if you want your program to do other stuff in between
242 The `block` parameter sets the stream to be fully non-blocking. In
243 this mode, the iterator always yields immediately. It returns
244 stream data, or `None`. Note that `timeout` supercedes this
245 argument, so it should also be set `None` to use this mode,
246 and non-blocking can potentially lead to 100% CPU usage.
248 Twitter Response Objects
249 ------------------------
251 Response from a twitter request. Behaves like a list or a string
252 (depending on requested format) but it has a few other interesting
255 `headers` gives you access to the response headers as an
256 httplib.HTTPHeaders instance. You can do
257 `response.headers.get('h')` to retrieve a header.
262 You can authenticate with Twitter in three ways: NoAuth, OAuth, or
263 OAuth2 (app-only). Get help() on these classes to learn how to use them.
265 OAuth and OAuth2 are probably the most useful.
271 Visit the Twitter developer page and create a new application:
273 **[https://dev.twitter.com/apps/new](https://dev.twitter.com/apps/new)**
275 This will get you a CONSUMER_KEY and CONSUMER_SECRET.
277 When users run your application they have to authenticate your app
278 with their Twitter account. A few HTTP calls to twitter are required
279 to do this. Please see the twitter.oauth_dance module to see how this
280 is done. If you are making a command-line app, you can use the
281 oauth_dance() function directly.
283 Performing the "oauth dance" gets you an ouath token and oauth secret
284 that authenticate the user with Twitter. You should save these for
285 later so that the user doesn't have to do the oauth dance again.
287 read_token_file and write_token_file are utility methods to read and
288 write OAuth token and secret key values. The values are stored as
289 strings in the file. Not terribly exciting.
291 Finally, you can use the OAuth authenticator to connect to Twitter. In
292 code it all goes like this:
295 from twitter import *
297 MY_TWITTER_CREDS = os.path.expanduser('~/.my_app_credentials')
298 if not os.path.exists(MY_TWITTER_CREDS):
299 oauth_dance("My App Name", CONSUMER_KEY, CONSUMER_SECRET,
302 oauth_token, oauth_secret = read_token_file(MY_TWITTER_CREDS)
304 twitter = Twitter(auth=OAuth(
305 oauth_token, oauth_token_secret, CONSUMER_KEY, CONSUMER_SECRET))
307 # Now work with Twitter
308 twitter.statuses.update(status='Hello, world!')
314 Twitter only supports the application-only flow of OAuth2 for certain
315 API endpoints. This OAuth2 authenticator only supports the application-only
318 To authenticate with OAuth2, visit the Twitter developer page and create a new
321 **[https://dev.twitter.com/apps/new](https://dev.twitter.com/apps/new)**
323 This will get you a CONSUMER_KEY and CONSUMER_SECRET.
325 Exchange your CONSUMER_KEY and CONSUMER_SECRET for a bearer token using the
326 oauth2_dance function.
328 Finally, you can use the OAuth2 authenticator and your bearer token to connect
329 to Twitter. In code it goes like this::
332 twitter = Twitter(auth=OAuth2(bearer_token=BEARER_TOKEN))
334 # Now work with Twitter
335 twitter.search.tweets(q='keyword')
341 Python Twitter Tools are released under an MIT License.