Make a graph of your social network from those you follow

friends.py

# a messy hack written by Edd Dumbill. http://twitter.com/edd

# You may need to rerun this script if you hit a Twitter Error because you
# use up API rate limiting. That's why we pickle the results, so we can resume
# where we left off.

# get the twitter module using 'easy_install twitter'

from twitter.api import Twitter, TwitterError
from twitter.oauth import OAuth
from xml.sax.saxutils import escape
import time
import pickle
import os

CONSUMER_KEY = 'XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX'
CONSUMER_SECRET = 'XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX'
MY_SCREEN_NAME = 'edd'

def all_friends(api, screen_name):
	friends = []
	cursor = -1
	while cursor != 0:
		print("Cursor is %d: name is %s" % (cursor, screen_name))
		r = api.statuses.friends(cursor=cursor, screen_name=screen_name)
		if len(r['users']) > 0:
			friends = friends + r['users']
		cursor = r['next_cursor']
	return friends

api = Twitter(
	auth=OAuth('12345-jhkdgfjdshgfdsjhdsjhgf', 	# replace with your OAuth key
		'DKJHfkjdshkjdshfLKDJHSFKSDJHFdjsfhs',  	# replace with OAuth token
		CONSUMER_KEY, CONSUMER_SECRET),						# use your own, as defined above
	api_version='1',
	domain='api.twitter.com')

me = api.users.show(screen_name=MY_SCREEN_NAME)
my_friends = all_friends(api, MY_SCREEN_NAME)
friend_ids = {}

if os.path.exists('friends.pickle'):
	pfile = open('friends.pickle', 'r')
	friend_ids = pickle.load(pfile)
	print(friend_ids.keys())
	pfile.close()

friend_ids[me['id']] = api.friends.ids(screen_name=MY_SCREEN_NAME)

print("Enumerating %d friends" % len(my_friends))

try:
	for u in my_friends:
		if not friend_ids.has_key(u['id']):
			print("Finding friends of %s, id %d" % (u['name'], u['id']))
	
			friend_ids[u['id']] = api.friends.ids(user_id=u['id'])
			time.sleep(1)
		else:
			print("Already loaded friends of %s, id %d" % (u['name'], u['id']))
			
except TwitterError:
	print("Got Twitter HTTP Error")
finally:
	pfile = open('friends.pickle', 'w')
	pickle.dump(friend_ids, pfile)
	print("Saved friends to pickle")
	pfile.close()

out = open("graph.graphml", "w")
out.write("""<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<graphml xmlns="http://graphml.graphdrawing.org/xmlns"
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xsi:schemaLocation="http://graphml.graphdrawing.org/xmlns
  http://graphml.graphdrawing.org/xmlns/1.0/graphml.xsd">

  <key id="name" for="node" attr.name="name" attr.type="string" />

  <graph edgedefault="directed">
""")

out.write("<node id='friend%d'><data key='name'>%s</data></node>\n" % (me['id'], escape(me['name'])))
# making a set of the friends as Twitter read process sometimes includes dupes
friends_set=set([(x['id'],x['name']) for x in my_friends])
for (f_id, f_name) in friends_set:
	out.write("<node id='friend%d'><data key='name'>%s</data></node>\n" % (f_id, escape(f_name)))

edge_id = 0
my_fids = set(friend_ids[me['id']])
written = {}
for u in my_friends:
	if written.has_key(u['id']):
		break
	else:
		written[u['id']] = True
	out.write("<!-- friends of %s -->\n" % escape(u['name']))
	# write an edge for my relationship to them
	out.write("<edge id='edge%d' source='friend%d' target='friend%d' />\n" % (edge_id, me['id'], u['id']))
	edge_id = edge_id + 1
	# now write edges for each of their connections within my follower network
	common_friend_ids = my_fids.intersection(set(friend_ids[u['id']]))
	for c in common_friend_ids:
		out.write("<edge id='edge%d' source='friend%d' target='friend%d' />\n" % (edge_id, u['id'], c))
		edge_id = edge_id + 1

out.write("""</graph></graphml>""")
out.close()

Several people have pointed out that the Python NetworkX library would have made writing the GraphML easier.

This is great, and I can't wait to try it, but it gives me an error because "Twitter REST API" is no longer active". Are you still using it and if so could you please share your updated script?

Thanks! Andre