twitter_bot_utils 0.10.2

Python utilities for twitter bots

Twitter bot utils make it a little easier to set up a Twitter bot, with an eye to making config and command-line options easy to manage and reproduce. They’re intended for managing a small-to-medium-sized coterie of Twitter accounts on one machine. The package is a super-simple wrapper for the excellent Tweepy library. It also provides shortcuts for setting up command line tools with argparse.

This package is intended to assist with the creation of bots for artistic or personal projects. Don’t use it to spam or harrass people.

Works with Python 2.7, 3.4 and 3.5 (2.6 & 3.3 probably work, too).

Install with pip install twitter_bot_utils.

Setting up a tweepy API

The main goal of Twitter bot utils is to create Tweepy instances with authentication data stored in a simple conf file. This gives botmakers a simple, reusable place to store keys outside of source control.

By default, twitter_bot_utils will read settings from a YAML or JSON config file. By default, it looks in the ~/ and ~/bots directories for files named “bots.yaml” or “bots.json”. Custom config locations can be set, too, of course.

import twitter_bot_utils as tbu

# Automatically check for a config file in the above-named directories
twitter = tbu.API('MyBotName')

# Specify a specific config file
twitter = tbu.API('MyBotName', config_file='path/to/config.yaml')

# This is possible, although you should probably just using Tweepy directly
twitter = tbu.API('MyBotName', consumer_key='...', consumer_secret='...', key='...', secret='...')

The bots config file is also useful for storing keys and parameters for other APIs, or for your own bots, keep reading!

The tbu.API object also extends the tweepy.API object with some methods useful for bots:

• Methods to check for the ID of recent tweets: last_tweet, last_reply, last_retweet. These are useful if your bot searches twitter and wants to avoid ingesting the same material.

• A retry in update_status when Twitter is over capacity. If update_status gets a 503 error from Twitter, it will wait 10 seconds and try again.

Twitter bot utils comes with some built-in command line parsers, and the API object will also happily consume the result of argparse.parser.parse_args() (see below for details).

Config file setup

Custom settings in the config are available at runtime, so use the config file for any special settings you want.

Example config file layout (This is YAML, JSON works, too):

# ~/bots.yaml

users:
    # twitter screen_name
    MyBotName:
        key: $oauth_key
        secret: $oauth_key_secret
        # The app key should match a key in apps below
        app: my_app_name
        custom_setting: 'hello world'

    other_bot:
        key: ...
        secret: ...
        app: my_app_name

apps:
    my_app_name:
        app_setting: "apple juice"
        consumer_key: ...
        consumer_secret: ...

foo: bar

Using the config settings:

import twitter_bot_utils as tbu

# Look for config in the default places mentioned above:
twitter = tbu.API('MyBotName')

# Get a general config setting. This might be the key for a third-party API
twitter.config['foo']
# 'bar'

# Settings from the user and app section are also available:
twitter.user['custom_setting']
# "hello world"

twitter.user['app_setting']
# "apple juice"

Setting a custom config file can be done with the config_file argument:

# The config keyword argument will set a custom file location
twitter = twitter_bot_utils.api.API('MyBotName', config_file='special/file/path.yaml')

Without user authentication

Some Twitter API queries don’t require user authentication. To set up an Tweepy API instance without user authentication, set up a bots.yaml file as above, but omit the users section. Then use the app keyword argument:

twitter = tbu.API(app='my_app_name', config_file='path/to/config.yaml')

twitter.search(q="Twitter searches don't require user authentication")

Recent tweets

Basically, the twitter_bot_utils.api.API object is a wrapper for Tweepy with some configuration reading options added. It also adds three convenience methods for finding recent tweets, since it’s often useful to know what a bot has done recently without setting up a whole backend for saving the bot’s tweets.

twitter = tbu.API('MyBotName')

twitter.last_tweet
# id of most recent tweet from MyBotName

twitter.last_reply
# id of most recent reply from MyBotName

twitter.last_retweet
# id of most recent retweet from MyBotName

# Example: what's happened since the last time the bot was active?
twitter.search('#botALLY', since_id=twitter.last_tweet)

Default Command Line Options

It’s useful to package bots as command line apps so that they can be easily run with cron. Twitter bot utils includes some helpers for working with argparse.

Some useful command line flags are available by default:

• -u, --user: Screen name to run as

• -n, --dry-run: Don’t tweet, just output to stdout

• -v, --verbose: Log to stdout

• -q, --quiet: Only log errors

• -c, --config: path to a config file. This is a JSON or YAML file laid out according to the above format. This option isn’t needed if the config file is in one of the default places.

Say this is yourapp.py:

import argparse
import twitter_bot_utils as tbu

# This sets up an argparse.ArgumentParser with the default arguments
parent = tbu.args.parent()
parser = argparse.ArgumentParser('My Example Bot', parents=[parent])
parser.add_argument('--my-arg', type=str, help='A custom argument')

args = parser.parse_args()

# Set up the tweepy API
# Note that you can pass the argparse.Namespace object
twitter = tbu.API(args)

# Generate a tweet somehow
tweet = my_tweet_function(args.my_arg)

# The API includes an instance of logging
# debug logs will output to stdout only if --verbose is set
# info logs will output even without --verbose
api.logger.debug("Generated %s", tweet)

# Use args.dry_run to control tweeting
if not args.dry_run:
    try:
        twitter.update_status(tweet)
    except Exception as e:
        # Error logs will go to stdout even when --quiet is set
        logger.error(e)

Then on the command line:

> python yourapp.py --help
usage: yourapp.py [options]

My Example Bot

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -c PATH, --config PATH
                        bots config file (json or yaml)
  -u SCREEN_NAME, --user SCREEN_NAME
                        Twitter screen name
  -n, --dry-run         Don't actually do anything
  -v, --verbose         Run talkatively
  -q, --quiet           Run quietly
  --my-arg MY_ARG       A custom argument

# Looks for settings in a config file (e.g. bots.yaml, see config section above)
# Prints results to stdout and doesn't publish anything
> python yourapp.py  --dry-run --verbose
Generated <EXAMPLE TWEET>

# Run quietly, say in a crontab file
> python yourapp.py --user MyBotName --quiet
Generated <EXAMPLE TWEET 2>

Helpers

Checking for entities

Easily check if tweets have specific entities:

import twitter_bot_utils

# Don't set include_entities to False and expect the below to work
statuses = twitter.search('example search', include_entities=True)

status = status[0]

twitter_bot_utils.helpers.has_mention(status)
# returns True if status has one or more mentions, otherwise False

twitter_bot_utils.helpers.has_hashtag(status)
# returns True if status has one or more hashtags, otherwise False

twitter_bot_utils.helpers.has_media(status)
# returns True if status has one or more media entities (images, video), otherwise False

twitter_bot_utils.helpers.has_entities(status)
# returns True if status has any entities

# These also exist:
# twitter_bot_utils.helpers.has_url
# twitter_bot_utils.helpers.has_symbol

Filtering out entities

Easily remove entities from a tweet’s text.

import twitter_bot_utils

api = twitter_bot_utils.api.API('MyBotName')

results = api.search("special topic")

results[0].text
# 'This is an example tweet with a #hashtag and a link http://foo.com'

twitter_bot_utils.helpers.remove_entity(results[0], 'hashtags')
# 'This is an example tweet with a  and a link http://foo.com'

twitter_bot_utils.helpers.remove_entity(results[0], 'urls')
# 'This is an example tweet with a #hashtag and a link '

# Remove multiple entities with remove_entities.
twitter_bot_utils.helpers.remove_entities(results[0], ['urls', 'hashtags', 'media'])
# 'This is an example tweet with a  and a link '

Command Line Utilities

• auto-follow: Follow accounts that follow your bot

• fave-mentions: Favorite your bot’s mentions