Python/Twitter: Posting tweets (with images)

There are a few services out there that'll post your RSS feed to multiple societ networks, but sometimes you want that little extra configurability which just won't happen unless you do it yourself.

There are a few ways of skinning this cat, but today I'll only be writing up about the easiest one.

What you'll need

• Twython (v3.0.0 at time of writing)
• A Twitter account (API v1.1 at time of writing)

Download and install Twython from the site or via "pip install twython".

Setting up twitter

What you'll need for this to work is a twitter "app" associated with your account. For the purpose of this tutorial, I'll show you how to set up your own account with your own app for testing purposes.

• Hit up https://dev.twitter.com and sign in with your twitter account.
• Go to "My Applications" (via top/right dropdown menu where your account image is).
• Create a new app by entering the name, description, website
• Go to "Settings" and see "Application Type"
• Change it to "read and write" and save.
• Back in the "Details" tab, click on "Create my access token" (it may take a few minutes so periodically refresh the page and until your access token appears)
• Click on the "OAuth tool" tab to make sure it's all filled in
• Copy all 4 values (Consumer and Access token key/secret) somewhere because you'll be needing them soon.

Looking at your normal twitter page, check out https://twitter.com/settings/applications and it should list your app with "Permissions: read and write".

Now that's twitter done.

Python setup

Now for the fun bits, coding!

Just a tweet:

import twython

twitter = twython.Twython(
"CONSUMER_KEY",
"CONSUMER_SECRET",
"ACCESS_TOKEN",
"ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET"
)

# Tweeting textually
twitter.update_status(status = "Testing tweet from Twig's Tech Tips")

And a tweet containing images:

# Update with image
# f = open("weather_sunny.png", 'rb')
# or
# f = urlopen("http://www.weather.com/sunny.jpg")

twitter.update_status_with_media(
status = "Testing tweet from Twig's Tech Tips... with imagery!",
media = f
)

There you have it, consider your cat is now skinned.

This setup can also be used for stuff like fetching/searching tweets using the twitter API, but just read the docs to find examples of that. Just be aware of the limitations which the twitter API impose before conjuring anything on a grand scale.

Sources

• Twython - Advanced Usage documentation

Twitter: Change number of results from twitter search API

The twitter search API is pretty flexible, but one of the things I wanted was to increase the number of results fetched.

By default, it returns about 20. The API is accessed through:

http://search.twitter.com/search.json?q=query&rpp=itemsperpage&page=pagenumber

Could have just been me, but I couldn't find the "results per page" (rpp) argument anywhere in the docs.

You can continue through the pages by feeding it new "page" numbers.

Now go nuts, knock yourself out!

Source

• How to get more than 20 results with the Twitter Search API

Twitter: Add share/tweet button on your content pages

Visit the Twitter Buttons page to generate your own.

To customise it a bit, you'll have to get your hands a little dirty.

Taking this for example:

<a href="https://twitter.com/share" class="twitter-share-button" data-url="http://twigstechtips.blogspot.com" data-text="I found this stupid post" data-via="myawesomeshirt" data-hashtags="shirts">Tweet</a>

<script>!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs");</script>

The first line is where your options go. A simple <a> tag which the Twitter API detects and replaces with a button.

If you don't declare a certain variable, it will simply revert to the default.

• data-url is the URL you wish to share. By default it will share the current page URL.
• data-text is the text which will be tweeted along with the link. By default, this is the page title.
• data-via is who you retweeted from I suppose? I set this to the site's twitter account. Default is empty.
• data-hashtags are the hashtags you want to append to the end of the tweet.

The second line asynchronously loads the Twitter API script. This is important because it won't halt the rest of your page from loading.

See my other posts about sharing buttons for Facebook and GooglePlus.