Drink the hose

Script to display or save tweets from the twitter stream. This shows how to use the python tweepy library to access the twitter streaming API.

Example

The command

python drink_the_hose.py -l 5 ":-)"

grabs 5 tweets that contain smiley face. Each tweet is printed on a separate line, with the user name, the user declared language, the number of tweets that user has made, the number of their friends, and the number of the followers:

@LutfiWijayanto (en, 3584, 44, 15): @HarukaN_JKT48 ohayou gon. Luar biasa.. :-)
@joaco_iturrieta (es, 158, 69, 22): Triunfo historico de chile en argentima :-) grande chile
@BhabhyAngela (en, 17571, 308, 732): @itsmejeremias @ravuena1 nabasa ko na :-)
@GuvRai (en, 14603, 1648, 1214): @andy_round oh I read them ages ago :-) But yea pretty much along the same lines :-) xx
@JessicaCHarris (en, 11963, 239, 173): Oh man, baby took me to see the hobbit :-) soooooo good

Setup

1. Install tweepy sudo pip install tweepy (requires python 2.x)
2. Grab this code git clone git://github.com/edwardabraham/drink_the_hose.git
3. Make a file secrets.py in the drink_the_hose directory that has your twitter access credentials in it. This file should contain the following string variables: consumer_key, consumer_secret, access_token, access_token_secret. To get these keys, you need to create a twitter app.

Usage

To get help: python drink_the_hose.py --help

To print the text of tweets from the twitter garden hose: python drink_the_hose.py

To print the text of tweets that contain a smiley face: python drink_the_hose.py -u your_name ":-)"

To only limit to 10 returns, specifiy a limit: python drink_the_hose.py -u your_name -l 10

To save the tweets to file as JSON, specify a path: python drink_the_hose.py -p stash