Tweepy and Twitter

As of 30th June 2023, here is the status of the Twitter API, and what you can do, and how to do it.

https://developer.twitter.com/en/portal/ is the developer portal

Tweepy and https://github.com/tweepy/tweepy is the Python wrapper I’m using. tweepy.org link to discord chat which is very active.

Setup

This was created by default for a newly signed up developer account. Notice App has to be in a Project. If things stop working, check it hasn’t moved to be a standalone app (which can happen if the app gets suspended I believe)

Setting user authentiction settings (click on the Set up link inside the App which is inside the Project)

App permissions - which enable OAuth 1.0a Authentication

Read and write (we can’t read on free tier, so just using write)

You’ll need to setup the OAuth2.0 auth as well, and it gives you the keys, even though I don’t need to use that.

Secrets

Are on the App

Just need these tokens

Consumer Keys

Like username and password for your App

API Key
API Key Secret

Authentication Tokens

In general these represent the User that you are making a request on behalf of source

Access Token
Access Token Secret

You’ll need to generate these 4 above

Bearer Token

Only use if it is non User related. Otherwise we need to use the way above. The app-only bearer token is by definition app-only and doesn’t have a user contxt source

Example - Calling Twitter API v2 with OAuth 1.0a Authentication

import tweepy
import time

# AutoArchiver2App / Keys and Tokens / Consumer Keys / API Key and Secret 
consumer_key="secret"
consumer_secret="secret"

# AutoArchiver2App / Keys and Token / Authentication Tokens / Access Token and Secret
access_token="secret"
access_token_secret="secret"

# Tweepy's interface for make requests to Twitter API v2
client = tweepy.Client(
    consumer_key=consumer_key,
    consumer_secret=consumer_secret,
    access_token=access_token,
    access_token_secret=access_token_secret
)

# as can't have 2 exactly the same tweets in a row so put in a time
message = f"Hello Twitter from tweepy - hitting Twitter API v2 with OAuth 1.0a Authentication at unixtime {time.time()}. Please ignore :-)"

# 280 characters test
message = "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Donec quam felis, ultricies nec, pellentesque eu, pretium quis, sem. Nulla consequat mas"

# 281 - this fails
# message = "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Donec quam felis, ultricies nec, pellentesque eu, pretium quis, sem. Nulla consequat masx"

try: 
    client.create_tweet(text=message)
except Exception as e:
    # eg 403 Forbidden You are not allowed to create a Tweet with duplicate content
    # 400 Bad Request Your Tweet text is too long. For more information on how Twitter determines text length see https://github.com/twitter/twitter-text.
    # 429 Too Many Requests - if you go over the 50 a day limit for example (free tier)
    print(f'unexpected error creating tweet: \n\n{e}\n')

Limits on the Free API access

About the Twitter API and Access levels

Tweet creation

1,500 Tweets posted per month

Types of Access

Here are the highlights:

Free. 1,500 Tweets Post per month limit. No Pull of tweets.
Basic ($100/month). 3,000 Tweets post per month. 10,0000 Pull per month
Pro ($5000/month)
Enterprise
Academic Research access https://developer.twitter.com/en/products/twitter-api/academic-research/application-info looks like not accepting new applications currently. 22nd Aug 2023 - I believe it is now shut down.