Python Twitter

A Python wrapper around the Twitter API.

By the Python-Twitter Developers

Introduction

This library provides a pure Python interface for the Twitter API. It works with Python versions from 2.7+ and Python 3.

Twitter provides a service that allows people to connect via the web, IM, and SMS. Twitter exposes a web services API and this library is intended to make it even easier for Python programmers to use.

Installing

You can install python-twitter using:

$ pip install python-twitter

If you are using python-twitter on Google App Engine, see more information about including 3rd party vendor library dependencies in your App Engine project.

Getting the code

The code is hosted at

Check out the latest development version anonymously with:

$ git clone git://github.com/bear/python-twitter.git
$ cd python-twitter

To install dependencies, run either:

$ make dev

or:

$ pip install -Ur requirements.testing.txt
$ pip install -Ur requirements.txt

Note that `make dev will install into your local pyenv all of the versions needed for test runs using tox`.

To install the minimal dependencies for production use (i.e., what is installed with pip install python-twitter) run:

$ make env

or:

$ pip install -Ur requirements.txt

Running Tests

The test suite can be run against a single Python version or against a range of them depending on which Makefile target you select.

Note that tests require `pip install pytest and optionally pip install pytest-cov (these are included if you have installed dependencies from requirements.testing.txt`)

To run the unit tests with a single Python version:

$ make test

to also run code coverage:

$ make coverage

To run the unit tests against a set of Python versions:

$ make tox

Documentation

View the latest python-twitter documentation at . You can view Twitter's API documentation at:

Using

The library provides a Python wrapper around the Twitter API and the Twitter data model. To get started, check out the examples in the examples/ folder or read the documentation at which contains information about getting your authentication keys from Twitter and using the library.

----Using with Django ----

Additional template tags that expand tweet urls and urlize tweet text. See the django template tags available for use with python-twitter:

Models

The library utilizes models to represent various data structures returned by Twitter. Those models are:

• twitter.Category
• twitter.DirectMessage
• twitter.Hashtag
• twitter.List
• twitter.Media
• twitter.Status
• twitter.Trend
• twitter.Url
• twitter.User
• twitter.UserStatus

To read the documentation for any of these models, run:

$ pydoc twitter.[model]

API

The API is exposed via the twitter.Api class.

The python-twitter requires the use of OAuth keys for nearly all operations. As of Twitter's API v1.1, authentication is required for most, if not all, endpoints. Therefore, you will need to register an app with Twitter in order to use this library. Please see the "Getting Started" guide on for a more information.

To generate an Access Token you have to pick what type of access your application requires and then do one of the following:

• Generate a token to access your own account
• Generate a pin-based token
• use the helper script get_access_token.py

For full details see the Twitter OAuth Overview

To create an instance of the twitter.Api with login credentials (Twitter now requires an OAuth Access Token for all API calls):

>>> import twitter
>>> api = twitter.Api(consumer_key='consumer_key',
                      consumer_secret='consumer_secret',
                      access_token_key='access_token',
                      access_token_secret='access_token_secret')

To see if your credentials are successful:

>>> print(api.VerifyCredentials())
{"id": 16133, "location": "Philadelphia", "name": "bear"}

NOTE: much more than the small sample given here will print

To fetch a single user's public status messages, where user is a Twitter user's screen name:

>>> statuses = api.GetUserTimeline(screen_name=user)
>>> print([s.text for s in statuses])

To fetch a list a user's friends:

>>> users = api.GetFriends()
>>> print([u.name for u in users])

To post a Twitter status message:

>>> status = api.PostUpdate('I love python-twitter!')
>>> print(status.text)
I love python-twitter!

There are many more API methods, to read the full API documentation either check out the documentation on readthedocs, build the documentation locally with:

$ make docs

or check out the inline documentation with:

$ pydoc twitter.Api

Todo

Patches, pull requests, and bug reports are welcome, just please keep the style consistent with the original source.

In particular, having more example scripts would be a huge help. If you have a program that uses python-twitter and would like a link in the documentation, submit a pull request against twitter/doc/getting_started.rst and add your program at the bottom.

The twitter.Status and twitter.User classes are going to be hard to keep in sync with the API if the API changes. More of the code could probably be written with introspection.

The twitter.Status and twitter.User classes could perform more validation on the property setters.

More Information

Please visit the google group for more discussion.

Contributors

Originally two libraries by DeWitt Clinton and Mike Taylor which was then merged into python-twitter.

Now it's a full-on open source project with many contributors over time. See AUTHORS.rst for the complete list.

License

Copyright 2007-2016 The Python-Twitter Developers

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the 'License');
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at

    http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an 'AS IS' BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.

Originally two libraries by DeWitt Clinton and Mike Taylor which was then merged into python-twitter.

Now it's a full-on open source project with many contributors over time:

• Jodok Batlogg,
• Kyle Bock,
• Brad Choate,
• Robert Clarke,
• Jim Cortez,
• Pierre-Jean Coudert,
• Aish Raj Dahal,
• Thomas Dyson,
• Jim Easterbrook
• Yoshinori Fukushima,
• Hameedullah Khan,
• Osama Khalid,
• Omar Kilani,
• Domen Kožar,
• Robert Laquey,
• Jason Lemoine,
• Pradeep Nayak,
• Ian Ozsvald,
• Nicolas Perriault,
• Trevor Prater,
• Glen Tregoning,
• Lars Weiler,
• Sebastian Wiesinger,
• Jake Robinson,
• Muthu Annamalai,
• abloch,
• cahlan,
• dpslwk,
• edleaf,
• ecesena,
• git-matrix,
• sbywater,
• thefinn93,
• themylogin,

2016-05-25
Going forward all changes will be tracked in docs/changelog.rst

2015-12-28
Large number of changes related to making the code Python v3 compatible. See the messy details at

Pull Requests
#525 Adds support for 280 character limit for tweets by trevorprater #267 initialize Api.__auth fixes #119 by rbpasker #266 Add full_text and page options in GetDirectMessages function by mistersalmon #264 Updates Media object with new methods, adds id param, adds tests by jeremylow #262 Update get_access_token.py by lababidi #261 Adding Collections by ryankicks #260 Added UpdateBackgroundImage method and added profile_link_color argument to UpdateProfile by BrandonBielicki #259 Added GetFriendIDsPaged by RockHoward #254 Adding api methods for suggestions and suggestions/:slug by trentstollery #253 Added who parameter to api.GetSearch by wilsonand1 #250 adds UpdateFriendship (shared Add/Edit friendship) by jheld #249 Fixed Non-ASCII printable representation in Trend by der-Daniel #246 Add __repr__ for status by era #245 Python-3 Fix: decode bytestreams for json load by ligthyear #243 Remove references to outdated API functionality: GetUserByEmail by Vector919 #239 Correct GetListsList docstring by tedmiston

Probably a whole lot that I missed - ugh!

2017-11-11
Added support for 280 character limit

2015-10-05
Added who to api.GetSearch

2014-12-29
removed reference to simplejson

2014-12-24
bump version to v2.3 bump version to v2.2 PEP8 standardization

2014-07-10
bump version to v2.1

2014-07-10
update copyright years change setup.py to allow installing via wheel renamed README.md to README.rst added AUTHORS.rst

2014-02-17
changed version to 1.3 and then to 1.3.1 because I forgot to include CHANGES fix Issue 143 - GetStatusOembed() url parameter was being stomped on fix debugHTTP in a brute force way but it works again Add id_str to Status class Added LookupFriendship() method for checking follow status pull request from lucas Fix bug of GetListMembers when specifying owner_screen_name pull request from shichao-an

2014-01-18
backfilling varioius lists endpoints added a basic user stream call

2014-01-17
changed to version 1.2 fixed python 3 issue in setup.py (print statements) fixed error in CreateList(), changed count default for GetFollowers to 200 and added a GetFollowersPaged() method

need to backfill commit log entries!

2013-10-06
changed version to 1.1 The following changes have been made since the 1.0.1 release

Remove from ParseTweet the Python 2.7 only dict comprehension item Fix GetListTimeline condition to enable owner_screen_name based fetching Many fixes for readability and PEP8 Cleaning up some of the package importing. Only importing the functions that are needed Also added first build of the sphinx documentation. Copied some info from the readme to the index page Added lines to setup.py to help the user troubleshoot install problems. #109 Removed the OAuth2 lines from the readme Removed OAuth2 library requirements Added GetListMembers()

2013-06-07
changed version to 1.0.1 added README bit about Python version requirement

2013-06-04
changed version to 1.0 removed doc directory until we can update docs for v1.1 API added to package MANIFEST.in the testdata directory

2013-05-28
bumped version to 1.0rc1 merged in api_v1.1 branch

The library is now only for Twitter API v1.1

2013-03-03
bumped version to 0.8.7

removed GetPublicTimeline from the docs so as to stop confusing new folks since it was the first example given ... d'oh!

2013-02-10
bumped version to 0.8.6

update requirements.txt to remove distribute reference github commit 3b9214a879e5fbd03036a7d4ae86babc03784846

Merge pull request #33 from iElectric/profile_image_url_https github commit 67cbb8390701c945a48094795474ca485f092049 patch by iElectric on github

Change User.NewFromJsonDict so that it will pull from either profile_image_url_https or profile_image_url to keep older code working properly if they have stored older json data

2013-02-07
bumped version to 0.8.5 lots of changes have been happening on Github and i've been very remiss in documenting them here in the Changes file 😦

this version is the last v1.0 API release and it's being made to push to PyPI and other places

all work now will be on getting the v1.1 API supported

2012-11-04
Api.UserLookUp() throws attribute error when corresponding screen_name is not found

Merge pull request #5 from thefinn93/master Setup.py crashes because the README file is now named README.md

Update .gitignore to add the PyCharm data directory

2012-10-16
Patch by Add exclude_replies parameter to GetUserTimeline

Bug reported by michaelmior on github get_access_token.py attempts Web auth

2011-12-03

Comment by qfuxiang to the above changeset The base url was wrong for the Followers API calls

Add include_entities parameter to GetStatus() Patch by gaelenh

Change PostUpdate() so that it takes the shortened link into account. Small tweak to the patch provided to make the shortened-link length set by a API value instead of a constant. Patch by ceesjan.ytec

AttributeError handles the fact that win* doesn't implement os.getlogin() Patch by yaleman

As described at , GET trends (corresponding to Api.GetTrendsCurrent) is now deprecated in favor of GET trends/:woeid. GET trends also now requires authentication, while trends/:woeid doesn't. Patch and excellent description by jessica.mckellar

Currently, two Trends containing the same information (name, query, and timestamp) aren't considered equal because __eq__ isn't overridden, like it is for Status, User, and the other Twitter objects. Patch and excellent description by jessica.mckellar

All variations on a theme - basically Twitter is returning something different for an error payload. Changed code to check for both 'error' and 'errors'.

2011-05-08

> A > comment in this issue made me realize that the parameter sanity check > for max_id was missing in GetMentions() - added > > First pass at working in some of the cursor support that has been in > the Twitter API but we haven't made full use of - still working out > the small issues.

2011-04-16

> bumped version to 0.8.3 released 0.8.2 to PyPI bumped version to 0.8.2 > > Issue 193 > Missing > retweet_count field on Status object Patch (with minor tweaks) by > from alissonp > > Issue 181 > Add > oauth2 to install_requires parameter list and also updated README to > note that the oauth2 lib can be found in two locations > > Issue 182, Issue 137, Issue 93, Issue 190 language value missing from > User object Added 'lang' item and also some others that were needed: > verified, notifications, contributors_enabled and listed_count > patches by wreinerat, apetresc, jpwigan and ghills

2011-02-26

> Issue 166 > Added a > basic, but sadly needed, check when parsing the json returned by > Twitter as Twitter has a habit of returning the failwhale HTML page > for a json api call 😦 Patch (with minor tweaks) by adam.aviv > > Issue 187 > Applied > patch by edward.hades to fix issue where MaximumHitFrequency returns 0 > when requests are maxed out > > Issue 184 > Applied > patch by jmstaley to put into the GetUserTimeline API parameter list > the max_id value (it was being completely ignored)

2011-02-20

> Added retweeted to Status class Fixed Status class to return Hashtags > list in AsDict() call > > Issue 185 > Added > retweeted_status to Status class - patch by edward.hades > > Issue 183 > Removed > errant print statement - reported by ProgVal

2010-12-21

> Setting version to 0.8.1 > > Issue 179 > Added > MANIFEST.in to give setup.py sdist some clues as to what files to > include in the tarball

2010-11-14

> Setting version to 0.8 for a bit as having a branch for this is really > overkill, i'll just take DeWitt advice and tag it when the release is > out the door > > Issue 175 > Added > geo_enabled to User class - basic parts of patch provided by > adam.aviv with other bits added by me to allow it to pass tests > > Issue 174 > Added > parts of adam.aviv's patch - the bits that add new field items to the > Status class. > > Issue 159 > Added > patch form adam.aviv to make the term parameter for GetSearch() > optional if geocode parameter is supplied

2010-11-03

> Ran pydoc to generate docs

2010-10-16

> Fixed bad date in previous CHANGES entry > > Fixed source of the python-oauth2 library we use: from brosner to > simplegeo > > I made a pass thru the docstrings and updated many to be the text from > the current Twitter API docs. Also fixed numerous whitespace issues > and did a s/[optional]/[Optional]/ change. > > Imported work by Colin Howe that he did to get the tests working. > > > > > Issue 169 > Patch > by yaemog which adds missing Trends support. > > Issue 168 > Only > cache successful results as suggested by yaemog. > > Issue 111 > Added a > new GetUserRetweets() call as suggested by yash888 Patch given was > adjusted to reflect the current code requirements. > > Issue 110 Added a VerifyCredentials() sample call to the README > example > > Issue 105 Added support for the page parameter to GetFriendsTimeline() > as requested by jauderho. I also updated GetFriendsTimeline() to > follow the current Twitter API documentation > > Somewhere in the patch frenzy of today an extra GetStatus() def was > introduced!?! Luckily it was caught by the tests. wooo tests! m/ > > Setting version to 0.8 > > r0.8 branch created and trunk set to version 0.9-devel

2010-09-26

> Issue 150 > Patch > by blhobbes which removes a double quoting issue that was happening > for GetSearch() Reported by huubhuubbarbatruuk > > Issue 160 > Patch > by yaemog which adds support for include_rts and include_entities > support to GetUserTimeline and GetPublicTimeline Small tweaks > post-patch > > Applied docstring tweak suggested by dclinton in revision comment > > Thanks for the catch! > > Issue 164 > Patch > by yaemog which adds GetRetweets support. Small tweaks and two typo > fixes post-patch. > > Issue 165 > Patch > by yaemog which adds GetStatus support. Small tweaks post-patch > > Issue 163 > Patch > by yaemog which adds users/lookup support. Small tweaks to docstring > only post-patch. > > Changed username/password parameter to Api class to be > consumer_key/consumer_secret to better match the new oAuth only > world that Twitter has demanded. > > Added debugHTTP to the parameter list to Api class to control if/when > the urllib debug output is displayed.

2010-08-25

> First pass at adding list support. Added a new List class and also > added to the Api class new methods for working with lists: > > > CreateList(self, user, name, mode=None, description=None) > > DestroyList(self, user, id) CreateSubscription(self, owner, list) > > DestroySubscription(self, owner, list) GetSubscriptions(self, user, > > cursor=-1) GetLists(self, user, cursor=-1)

2010-08-24

> Fixed introduced bug in the Destroy* and Create* API calls where any > of the routines were passing in an empty dict for POST data. Before > the oAuth change that was enough to tell _FetchUrl() to use POST > instead of GET but now a non-empty dict is required. > > Issue 144 > > GetFriends() where it was failing with a 'unicode object has no > attribute get'. This was caused when Twitter changed how they return > the JSON data. It used to be a straight list but now there are some > elements and then the list.

2010-08-18

> Applied the json/simplejson part of the patch found in Issue 64 > () Patch > provided by Thomas Bohmbach > > Applied patch provided by liris.pp in Issue 147 > Ensures > that during a PostStatus we count the length using a unicode aware > len() routine. Tweaked patch slightly to take into account that the > twitter.Api() instance may have been setup with None for > input_encoding.

2010-08-17

> Fixed error in the POST path for _FetchUrl() where by I show to the > world that yes, I do make last minute changes and completely forget to > test them 😦 Thanks to Peter Sanchez for finding and pointing to > working code that showed the fix

2010-08-15

> Added more help text (I hope it helps) to the README and also to > get_access_token.py. > > Added doctext notes to twitter.Api() parameter list to explain more > about oAuth. > > Added import exception handling for parse_qs() and parse_qsl() as it > seems those funcitons moved between 2.5 and 2.6 so the oAuth update > broke the lib under python2.5. Thanks to Rich for the bug find (sorry > it had to be found the hard way!) > > from changeset 184:60315000989c by DeWitt Update the generated > twitter.py docs to match the trunk

2010-08-14

> Fixed silly typo in _FetchUrl() when doing a POST Thanks to Peter > Sanchez for the find and fix! > > Added some really basic text to the get_access_token.py startup > output that explains why, for now, you need to visit Twitter and get > an Application key/secret to use this library

2010-08-12

> Updated code to use python-oauth2 library for authentication. Twitter > has set a deadline, 2010-08-16 as of this change, for the switch from > Basic to oAuth. > > The oAuth integration was inspired by the work done by Hameedullah > Khan and others. > > The change to using python-oauth2 library was done purely to align > python-twitter with an oauth library that was maintained and had tests > to try and minimize grief moving forward. > > Slipped into GetFriendsTimeline() a new parameter, retweets, to allow > the call to pull from the "friends_timeline" or the "home_timeline". > > Fixed some typos and white-space issues and also updated the README to > point to the new Twitter Dev site.

2010-08-02

> Updated copyright information.

2010-06-13

> Applied changeset from nicdumz repo nicdumz-cleaner-python-twitter
> r=07df3feee06c8d0f9961596e5fceae9e74493d25 datetime is required for > MaximumHitFrequency > > Applied changeset from nicdumz repo nicdumz-cleaner-python-twitter
> r=dd669dff32d101856ed6e50fe8bd938640b04d77 update source URLs in > README > > Applied changeset from nicdumz repo nicdumz-cleaner-python-twitter
> r=8f0796d7fdcea17f4162aeb22d3c36cb603088c7 adjust tests to reflect > -> change > > Applied changeset from nicdumz repo nicdumz-cleaner-python-twitter
> r=3c05b8ebe59eca226d9eaef2760cecca9d50944a tests: add .info() method > to objects returned by our Mockup handler This is required to > completely mimick urllib, and have successful response.headers > attribute accesses. > > Applied partial patch for Issue 113 > > > > The partial bit means we changed the parameter from "page" to > > "cursor" so the call would work. What was left out was a more direct > > way to return the cursor value after the call and also in the > > patch they also changed the method to return an iterator.

2010-05-17

> Issue 50 > Applied patch by wheaties.box that implements a new method to return > the Rate Limit Status and also adds the new method MaximumHitFrequency > > Multiple typo, indent and whitespace tweaks > > Issue 60 > Pulled out new GetFavorites and GetMentions methods from the patch > submitted by joegermuska > > Issue 62 > Applied patch from lukev123 that adds gzip compression to the GET > requests sent to Twitter. The patch was modified to default gzip to > False and to allow the twitter.API class instantiation to set the > value to True. This was done to not change current default behaviour > radically. > > Issue 80 > Fixed PostUpdate() call example in the README

2010-05-16

> Issue 19 > TinyURL example and the idea for this comes from a bug filed by > acolorado with patch provided by ghills. > > Issue 37 > Added base_url to the twitter.API class init call to allow the user > to override the default base. Since Twitter now > supports https for all calls I (bear) changed the patch to default to > https instead of http. Original issue by kotecha.ravi, patch by > wiennat and with implementation tweaks by bear. > > Issue 45 > Two grammar fixes for relative_created_at property Patches by > thomasdyson and chris.boardman07

2010-01-24

> Applying patch submitted to fix Issue 70 > > > The patch was originally submitted by user ghills, adapted by > livibetter and adapted even further by JimMoefoe (read the comments > for the full details 😃 ) > > Applying patch submitted by markus.magnuson to add new method > GetFriendIDs Issue 94 >

2009-06-13

> Releasing 0.6 to help people avoid the Twitpocalypse.

2009-05-03

> Support hashlib in addition to the older md5 library.

2009-03-11

> Added page parameter to GetReplies, GetFriends, GetFollowers, and > GetDirectMessages

2009-03-03

> Added count parameter to GetFriendsTimeline

2009-03-01
Add PostUpdates, which automatically splits long text into multiple updates.

2009-02-25

> Add in_reply_to_status_id to api.PostUpdate

2009-02-21

> Wrap any error responses in a TwitterError Add since_id to > GetFriendsTimeline and GetUserTimeline

2009-02-20

> Added since and since_id to Api.GetReplies

2008-07-10

> Added new properties to User and Status classes. Removed spurious > self-import of the twitter module Added a NOTICE file Require > simplejson 2.x or later Added get/create/destroy favorite flags for > status messages. Bug fix for non-tty devices.

2007-09-13

> Unset the executable bit on README.

2007-09-13

> Released version 0.5. Added back support for setuptools > (conditionally) Added support for X-Twitter-* HTTP headers Fixed the > tests to work across all timezones Removed the 140 character limit > from PostUpdate Added support for per-user tmp cache directories

2007-06-13

> Released 0.4. Fixed a unicode error that prevented tweet.py from > working. Added DestroyStatus Added DestroyDirectMessage Added > CreateFriendship Added DestoryFriendship

2007-06-03

> Fixed the bug that prevented unicode strings being posted Username and > password now set on twitter.Api, not individual method calls Added > SetCredentials and ClearCredentials Added GetUser ("users/show" in the > twitter web api) Added GetFeatured Added GetDirectMessages Added > GetStatus ("statuses/show" in the twitter web api) Added GetReplies > Added optional since_id parameter on GetPublicTimeline Added optional > since parameter on GetUserTimeline Added optional since and user > parameters on GetFriendsTimeline Added optional user parameter on > GetFriends

2007-04-27

> Modified examples/twitter-to-xhtml.py to handle unicode Dropped > dependency on setuptools (too complicated/buggy) Added unicode test > cases Fixed issue 2 "Rename needs an unlink in front"

2007-04-02

> Released 0.3. Use gmtime not localtime to calculate > relative_created_at.

2007-03-26

> Released 0.2 GetUserTimeline can accept userid or username.

2007-03-21

> Calculate relative_created_at on the fly

2007-01-28

> Released 0.1 Initial checkin of python-twitter