GetOldTweets3

A Python 3 library and a corresponding command line utility for accessing old tweets.

GetOldTweets3 is an improvement fork of the original Jefferson Henrique's GetOldTweets-python. It fixes known issues and adds features such as counting retweets, searching over multiple users accounts, etc. GetOldTweets3 supports only Python 3.

Details

Twitter Official API has the bother limitation of time constraints, you can't get older tweets than a week. Some tools provide access to older tweets but in the most of them you have to spend some money before. I was searching other tools to do this job but I didn't found it, so after analyze how Twitter Search through browser works I understand its flow. Basically when you enter on Twitter page a scroll loader starts, if you scroll down you start to get more and more tweets, all through calls to a JSON provider. After mimic we get the best advantage of Twitter Search on browsers, it can search the deepest oldest tweets.

Installation

Use pip install GetOldTweets3
or pip install -e git+https://github.com/Mottl/GetOldTweets3#egg=GetOldTweets3

Command line utility

GetOldTweets3: exports tweets to a specified csv file ("output_got.csv" by default).

Examples

Get help:

GetOldTweets3 -h

Example 1 - Get tweets by query search:

GetOldTweets3 --querysearch "europe refugees" --maxtweets 10

Example 1 - Get the last 10 top tweets by username:

GetOldTweets3 --username "barackobama" --toptweets --maxtweets 10

Example 3 - Get tweets by the username and bound dates (until date is not included) and preserve emojis as unicode:

GetOldTweets3 --username "barackobama" --since 2015-09-10 --until 2015-09-12 --maxtweets 10 --emoji unicode

Example 4 - Get tweets by several usernames:

GetOldTweets3 --username "BarackObama,AngelaMerkeICDU" --usernames-from-file userlist.txt --maxtweets 10

(check https://github.com/Mottl/influencers for some prepared lists of usernames)

Example 5 - Get tweets by language:

GetOldTweets3 --querysearch "bitcoin" --lang cn --maxtweets 10

Example 6 - Get tweets by place:

GetOldTweets3 --querysearch "bitcoin" --near "Berlin, Germany" --within 25km --maxtweets 10

Example 7 - Get tweets by geo coordinates:

GetOldTweets3 --querysearch "museum" --near "55.75, 37.61" --within 40km --maxtweets 10

Example 8 - Get tweets by minimum number of replies:

GetOldTweets3 --querysearch "bitcoin" --minreplies 10 --maxtweets 10

Example 9 - Get tweets by minimum number of favorites:

GetOldTweets3 --querysearch "bitcoin" --minfaves 10 --maxtweets 10

Example 10 - Get tweets by minimum number of retweets:

GetOldTweets3 --querysearch "bitcoin" --minretweets 10 --maxtweets 10

Example 11 - Get tweets by excluding tweets with any word of a list:

GetOldTweets3 --querysearch "bitcoin" --exclude-words-from-file excludewords.txt --maxtweets 10

where words to exclude are separated by a whitespace character in the excludewords.txt file.

Python classes

Tweet: Model class that describes a specific tweet.
- id (str)
- permalink (str)
- username (str)
- to (str)
- text (str)
- date (datetime) in UTC
- retweets (int)
- favorites (int)
- mentions (str)
- hashtags (str)
- geo (str)
TweetManager: A manager class to help getting tweets in Tweet's model.
- getTweets (TwitterCriteria): Return the list of tweets retrieved by using an instance of TwitterCriteria.
TwitterCriteria: A collection of search parameters to be used together with TweetManager.
- setUsername (str or iterable): An optional specific username(s) from a twitter account (with or without "@").
- setSince (str. "yyyy-mm-dd"): A lower bound date (UTC) to restrict search.
- setUntil (str. "yyyy-mm-dd"): An upper bound date (not included) to restrict search.
- setQuerySearch (str): A query text to be matched.
- setTopTweets (bool): If True only the Top Tweets will be retrieved.
- setNear(str): A reference location area from where tweets were generated.
- setWithin (str): A distance radius from "near" location (e.g. 15mi).
- setMaxTweets (int): The maximum number of tweets to be retrieved. If this number is unsetted or lower than 1 all possible tweets will be retrieved.

Examples

Get tweets by username(s):

import GetOldTweets3 as got

tweetCriteria = got.manager.TweetCriteria().setUsername("barackobama whitehouse")\
                                           .setMaxTweets(2)
tweet = got.manager.TweetManager.getTweets(tweetCriteria)[0]
print(tweet.text)

Get tweets by query search:

tweetCriteria = got.manager.TweetCriteria().setQuerySearch('europe refugees')\
                                           .setSince("2015-05-01")\
                                           .setUntil("2015-09-30")\
                                           .setMaxTweets(1)
tweet = got.manager.TweetManager.getTweets(tweetCriteria)[0]
print(tweet.text)

Get tweets by username and bound dates and preserve emojis as unicode:

tweetCriteria = got.manager.TweetCriteria().setUsername("barackobama")\
                                           .setSince("2015-09-10")\
                                           .setUntil("2016-01-01")\
                                           .setMaxTweets(1)\
                                           .setEmoji("unicode")
tweet = got.manager.TweetManager.getTweets(tweetCriteria)[0]
print(tweet.text)

Get the last 10 top tweets by username:

tweetCriteria = got.manager.TweetCriteria().setUsername("barackobama")\
                                           .setTopTweets(True)\
                                           .setMaxTweets(10)
tweet = got.manager.TweetManager.getTweets(tweetCriteria)[0]
print(tweet.text)