python-twitter 2.1

A Python wrapper around the Twitter API

Python Twitter

A Python wrapper around the Twitter API.

By the Python-Twitter Developers <[e-mail]>

.. image:: https://pypip.in/wheel/python-twitter/badge.png
:target: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/python-twitter/
:alt: Wheel Status

============
Introduction
============

This library provides a pure Python interface for the `Twitter API https://dev.twitter.com/`. It works with Python versions from 2.6+. Python 3 support is under development.

`Twitter http://twitter.com` provides a service that allows people to connect via the web, IM, and SMS. Twitter exposes a `web services API https://dev.twitter.com/overview/documentation` 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

Testing::

$ python twitter_test.py

================
Getting the code
================

The code is hosted at https://github.com/bear/python-twitter

Check out the latest development version anonymously with::

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

Setup a virtual environment and install dependencies:

$ make env

Activate the virtual environment created:

$ source env/bin/activate

Run tests:

$ make test

To see other options available, run:

$ make help


=============
Documentation
=============

View the last release API documentation at: https://dev.twitter.com/overview/documentation

=====
Using
=====

The library provides a Python wrapper around the Twitter API and the Twitter data model.

-----
Model
-----

The three model classes are ``twitter.Status``, ``twitter.User``, and ``twitter.DirectMessage``. The API methods return instances of these classes.

To read the full API for ``twitter.Status``, ``twitter.User``, or ``twitter.DirectMessage``, run::

$ pydoc twitter.Status
$ pydoc twitter.User
$ pydoc twitter.DirectMessage

---
API
---

The API is exposed via the ``twitter.Api`` class.

The python-twitter library now only supports oAuth authentication as the Twitter devs have indicated that OAuth is the only method that will be supported moving forward.

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 *short name*::

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

To fetch a list a user's friends (requires authentication)::

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

To post a Twitter status message (requires authentication)::

>>> 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::

$ pydoc twitter.Api

----
Todo
----

Patches and bug reports are [welcome](https://github.com/bear/python-twitter/issues/new), just please keep the style consistent with the original source.

Add more example scripts.

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.

Statement coverage of ``twitter_test`` is only about 80% of twitter.py.

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

----------------
More Information
----------------

Please visit `the google group http://groups.google.com/group/python-twitter` 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 2007-2014 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,
* Glen Tregoning,
* Lars Weiler,
* Sebastian Wiesinger,
* Jake Robinson,
* abloch,
* cahlan,
* dpslwk,
* edleaf,
* ecesena,
* git-matrix,
* sbywater,
* thefinn93,
* themylogin,

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
https://github.com/bear/python-twitter/issues/4
Api.UserLookUp() throws attribute error when corresponding screen_name is not found

https://github.com/bear/python-twitter/pull/5
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
http://code.google.com/p/python-twitter/issues/detail?id=233
Patch by [e-mail]
Add exclude_replies parameter to GetUserTimeline

https://github.com/bear/python-twitter/issues/1
Bug reported by michaelmior on github
get_access_token.py attempts Web auth

2011-12-03
https://code.google.com/p/python-twitter/source/detail?r=263fe2a0db8be23347e92b81d6ab3c33b4ef292f
Comment by qfuxiang to the above changeset
The base url was wrong for the Followers API calls

https://code.google.com/p/python-twitter/issues/detail?id=213
Add include_entities parameter to GetStatus()
Patch by gaelenh

https://code.google.com/p/python-twitter/issues/detail?id=214
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

https://code.google.com/p/python-twitter/issues/detail?id=216
AttributeError handles the fact that win* doesn't implement
os.getlogin()
Patch by yaleman

https://code.google.com/p/python-twitter/issues/detail?id=217
As described at https://dev.twitter.com/docs/api/1/get/trends,
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

https://code.google.com/p/python-twitter/issues/detail?id=218
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

https://code.google.com/p/python-twitter/issues/detail?id=220
https://code.google.com/p/python-twitter/issues/detail?id=211
https://code.google.com/p/python-twitter/issues/detail?id=206
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

https://code.google.com/p/python-twitter/issues/detail?id=184
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
http://code.google.com/p/python-twitter/issues/detail?id=193
Missing retweet_count field on Status object
Patch (with minor tweaks) by from alissonp

Issue 181
http://code.google.com/p/python-twitter/issues/detail?id=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
http://code.google.com/p/python-twitter/issues/detail?id=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
http://code.google.com/p/python-twitter/issues/detail?id=187
Applied patch by edward.hades to fix issue where MaximumHitFrequency
returns 0 when requests are maxed out

Issue 184
http://code.google.com/p/python-twitter/issues/detail?id=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
http://code.google.com/p/python-twitter/issues/detail?id=185
Added retweeted_status to Status class - patch by edward.hades

Issue 183
http://code.google.com/p/python-twitter/issues/detail?id=183
Removed errant print statement - reported by ProgVal

2010-12-21

Setting version to 0.8.1

Issue 179
http://code.google.com/p/python-twitter/issues/detail?id=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
http://code.google.com/p/python-twitter/issues/detail?id=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
http://code.google.com/p/python-twitter/issues/detail?id=174
Added parts of adam.aviv's patch - the bits that add new field items
to the Status class.

Issue 159
http://code.google.com/p/python-twitter/issues/detail?id=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.
http://code.google.com/r/colinthehowe-python-twitter-tests/source/detail?r=6cff589aca9c955df8354fe4d8e302ec4a2eb31c
http://code.google.com/r/colinthehowe-python-twitter-tests/source/detail?r=cab8e32d7a9c34c66d2e75eebc7a1ba6e1eac8ce
http://code.google.com/r/colinthehowe-python-twitter-tests/source/detail?r=b434d9e5dd7b989ae24483477e3f00b1ad362cc5

Issue 169
http://code.google.com/p/python-twitter/issues/detail?id=169
Patch by yaemog which adds missing Trends support.

Issue 168
http://code.google.com/p/python-twitter/issues/detail?id=168
Only cache successful results as suggested by yaemog.

Issue 111
http://code.google.com/p/python-twitter/issues/detail?id=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
http://code.google.com/p/python-twitter/issues/detail?id=150
Patch by blhobbes which removes a double quoting issue that
was happening for GetSearch()
Reported by huubhuubbarbatruuk

Issue 160
http://code.google.com/p/python-twitter/issues/detail?id=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
http://code.google.com/p/python-twitter/source/detail?r=a858412e38f7e3856fef924291ef039284d3a6e1
Thanks for the catch!

Issue 164
http://code.google.com/p/python-twitter/issues/detail?id=164
Patch by yaemog which adds GetRetweets support.
Small tweaks and two typo fixes post-patch.

Issue 165
http://code.google.com/p/python-twitter/issues/detail?id=165
Patch by yaemog which adds GetStatus support.
Small tweaks post-patch

Issue 163
http://code.google.com/p/python-twitter/issues/detail?id=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
http://code.google.com/p/python-twitter/issues/detail?id=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 (http://code.google.com/p/python-twitter/issues/detail?id=64)
Patch provided by Thomas Bohmbach

Applied patch provided by liris.pp in Issue 147
http://code.google.com/p/python-twitter/issues/detail?id=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 http://twitter.com -> https://twitter.com 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
http://code.google.com/p/python-twitter/issues/detail?id=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 http://code.google.com/p/python-twitter/issues/detail?id=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 http://code.google.com/p/python-twitter/issues/detail?id=60
Pulled out new GetFavorites and GetMentions methods from the patch
submitted by joegermuska

Issue 62 http://code.google.com/p/python-twitter/issues/detail?id=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 http://code.google.com/p/python-twitter/issues/detail?id=80
Fixed PostUpdate() call example in the README

2010-05-16

Issue 19 http://code.google.com/p/python-twitter/issues/detail?id=19
TinyURL example and the idea for this comes from a bug filed by
acolorado with patch provided by ghills.

Issue 37 http://code.google.com/p/python-twitter/issues/detail?id=37
Added base_url to the twitter.API class init call to allow the user
to override the default https://twitter.com 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 http://code.google.com/p/python-twitter/issues/detail?id=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
http://code.google.com/p/python-twitter/issues/detail?id=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 http://code.google.com/p/python-twitter/issues/detail?id=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