JohnSpeno / mytweets

Script for saving a JSON archive of your tweets.

#mytweets

Forked by Phil Gyford
[e-mail]

This is a fork of simonw's original mytweets script:
http://github.com/simonw/mytweets/tree/master via http://github.com/blech/mytweets

mytweets is a script to back up all your (and/or your friends') tweets to local files. It can save them in JSON or Python's pickle format. Subsequent runs will fetch tweets since the last run and add them to the file(s).

Now works with the Twitter API v1.1.

Notes

1. mytweets requires python-oauth2 from http://github.com/simplegeo/python-oauth2
2. python-oauth2 in turn requires httplib2 from http://code.google.com/p/httplib2/
3. mytweets requires simplejson (unless Python 2.6) from http://pypi.python.org/pypi/simplejson/

(or use the pip REQUIREMENTS.txt file)

## Directions

1. Put fetch.py in any directory

2. Run chmod +x fetch.py

3. Set up your Twitter account with a new app:

   1. Go to http://dev.twitter.com/ and log in with your Twitter account.
   2. Go to 'My applications', in the drop-down menu under your icon, top-right.
   3. Click the 'Create a new application' button.
   4. Fill out the form.
      • Set 'Name' (it won't be publicly visible unless you also use this app to post tweets).
      • Set 'Description' (it's required).
      • Set 'Website' to some URL (it's required).
      • Agree with the terms and submit the form.

4. By default the application will be 'Read-only'. If you want to access direct messages then go to the 'Settings' tab and change the 'Application Type' to 'Read, Write and Access direct messages'.

5. At the bottom of the 'Details' tab page, click the 'Create my access token' button. You might need to refresh the page once or twice after that before the new token appears.

6. Create a file called config.py in the same directory as the fetchy.py script. Copy and paste the 'Consumer key', 'Consumer secret', 'Access token' and 'Access token secret' into it in this format:

    CONSUMER_KEY = 'Esdfy8iSDF89vdaDFSa789'
    CONSUMER_SECRET = 'DFYUK89fddsfadFDDFS789vsdCXUdfs789xcvDSFH'
    ACCESS_TOKEN = '74382-89FDSHJKjkdsfsfFDSY89SFDFES8978dfsfsda78fdl'
    ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET = '0dfsYFDSs789SDF7uyfdshjksdf789SFSDFHJKSDF'
   

   Or else you can use the -k, -s, -o, -e options on the command line.

7. Add the FILE_PATH to where you want the resulting file of tweets to be saved, into config.py:

    FILE_PATH = '/path/to/the/file/we/will/create/'
   

   or use the -f option on the command line.

8. Optionally add the TIMELINE argument which can be one of user
   (default), friends, mentions, direct, direct-sent, favorites into config.py:

    TIMELINE = 'friends'
   

   or use the -m option on the command line.

9. Run the command like so:

    ./fetch.py [-k your-consumer-key -s your-consumer-secret \
        -o your-access-token -e your-access-token-secret \
        -f /path/to/the/file/we/will/create/ \
        -m [user|friends|mentions|direct|direct-sent|favorites]] [-t]
   

   ie, if all your config settings are in config.py you'll only need to do something like:

    ./fetch.py -m friends
   

   It can take a long time to run first time round as later pages of results can take a long time to be returned from Twitter.

10. Run the command again at any time to save any tweets created since you last ran the script.