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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)
140 # Search for the latest tweets about #pycon
141 t.search.tweets(q="#pycon")
144 Using the data returned
145 -----------------------
147 Twitter API calls return decoded JSON. This is converted into
148 a bunch of Python lists, dicts, ints, and strings. For example:
151 x = twitter.statuses.home_timeline()
153 # The first 'tweet' in the timeline
156 # The screen name of the user who wrote the first 'tweet'
157 x[0]['user']['screen_name']
163 If you prefer to get your Twitter data in XML format, pass
164 format="xml" to the Twitter object when you instantiate it:
167 twitter = Twitter(format="xml")
170 The output will not be parsed in any way. It will be a raw string
174 The TwitterStream class
175 -----------------------
177 The TwitterStream object is an interface to the Twitter Stream
178 API. This can be used pretty much the same as the Twitter class
179 except the result of calling a method will be an iterator that
180 yields objects decoded from the stream. For example::
183 twitter_stream = TwitterStream(auth=OAuth(...))
184 iterator = twitter_stream.statuses.sample()
186 for tweet in iterator:
187 ...do something with this tweet...
190 Per default the ``TwitterStream`` object uses
191 [public streams](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis/streams/public).
192 If you want to use one of the other
193 [streaming APIs](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis), specify the URL
196 - [Public streams](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis/streams/public): stream.twitter.com
197 - [User streams](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis/streams/user): userstream.twitter.com
198 - [Site streams](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis/streams/site): sitestream.twitter.com
200 Note that you require the proper
201 [permissions](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/application-permission-model) to
202 access these streams. E.g. for direct messages your
203 [application](https://dev.twitter.com/apps) needs the "Read, Write & Direct
204 Messages" permission.
206 The following example demonstrates how to retrieve all new direct messages
207 from the user stream:
211 consumer_key='[your consumer key]',
212 consumer_secret='[your consumer secret]',
213 token='[your token]',
214 token_secret='[your token secret]'
216 twitter_userstream = TwitterStream(auth=auth, domain='userstream.twitter.com')
217 for msg in twitter_userstream.user():
218 if 'direct_message' in msg:
219 print msg['direct_message']['text']
222 The iterator will yield until the TCP connection breaks. When the
223 connection breaks, the iterator yields `{'hangup': True}`, and
224 raises `StopIteration` if iterated again.
226 Similarly, if the stream does not produce heartbeats for more than
227 90 seconds, the iterator yields `{'hangup': True,
228 'heartbeat_timeout': True}`, and raises `StopIteration` if
231 The `timeout` parameter controls the maximum time between
232 yields. If it is nonzero, then the iterator will yield either
233 stream data or `{'timeout': True}` within the timeout period. This
234 is useful if you want your program to do other stuff in between
237 The `block` parameter sets the stream to be fully non-blocking. In
238 this mode, the iterator always yields immediately. It returns
239 stream data, or `None`. Note that `timeout` supercedes this
240 argument, so it should also be set `None` to use this mode.
242 Twitter Response Objects
243 ------------------------
245 Response from a twitter request. Behaves like a list or a string
246 (depending on requested format) but it has a few other interesting
249 `headers` gives you access to the response headers as an
250 httplib.HTTPHeaders instance. You can do
251 `response.headers.get('h')` to retrieve a header.
256 You can authenticate with Twitter in three ways: NoAuth, OAuth, or
257 OAuth2 (app-only). Get help() on these classes to learn how to use them.
259 OAuth and OAuth2 are probably the most useful.
265 Visit the Twitter developer page and create a new application:
267 **[https://dev.twitter.com/apps/new](https://dev.twitter.com/apps/new)**
269 This will get you a CONSUMER_KEY and CONSUMER_SECRET.
271 When users run your application they have to authenticate your app
272 with their Twitter account. A few HTTP calls to twitter are required
273 to do this. Please see the twitter.oauth_dance module to see how this
274 is done. If you are making a command-line app, you can use the
275 oauth_dance() function directly.
277 Performing the "oauth dance" gets you an ouath token and oauth secret
278 that authenticate the user with Twitter. You should save these for
279 later so that the user doesn't have to do the oauth dance again.
281 read_token_file and write_token_file are utility methods to read and
282 write OAuth token and secret key values. The values are stored as
283 strings in the file. Not terribly exciting.
285 Finally, you can use the OAuth authenticator to connect to Twitter. In
286 code it all goes like this:
289 from twitter import *
291 MY_TWITTER_CREDS = os.path.expanduser('~/.my_app_credentials')
292 if not os.path.exists(MY_TWITTER_CREDS):
293 oauth_dance("My App Name", CONSUMER_KEY, CONSUMER_SECRET,
296 oauth_token, oauth_secret = read_token_file(MY_TWITTER_CREDS)
298 twitter = Twitter(auth=OAuth(
299 oauth_token, oauth_token_secret, CONSUMER_KEY, CONSUMER_SECRET))
301 # Now work with Twitter
302 twitter.statuses.update(status='Hello, world!')
308 Twitter only supports the application-only flow of OAuth2 for certain
309 API endpoints. This OAuth2 authenticator only supports the application-only
312 To authenticate with OAuth2, visit the Twitter developer page and create a new
315 **[https://dev.twitter.com/apps/new](https://dev.twitter.com/apps/new)**
317 This will get you a CONSUMER_KEY and CONSUMER_SECRET.
319 Exchange your CONSUMER_KEY and CONSUMER_SECRET for a bearer token using the
320 oauth2_dance function.
322 Finally, you can use the OAuth2 authenticator and your bearer token to connect
323 to Twitter. In code it goes like this::
326 twitter = Twitter(auth=OAuth2(bearer_token=BEARER_TOKEN))
328 # Now work with Twitter
329 twitter.search.tweets(q='keyword')
335 Python Twitter Tools are released under an MIT License.