get_user_tweets.py

'''
Author: Sean Beck

A script for downloading a Twitter user's
entire tweet archive. Note that it is limited
to only grabbing up to 3200 of a user's tweets
per a Twitter limitation mentioned on their documentation
page: https://dev.twitter.com/rest/reference/get/statuses/user_timeline
'''
import csv
import os
import argparse

import tweepy

PATH = os.path.dirname(os.path.realpath(__file__))


def get_args():
    parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
    parser.add_argument('-u', '--username', type=str, help='The user you would like to get an archive of')
    return parser.parse_args()


def get_api():
    '''
    Creates an instance of the tweepy API class
    '''
    with open(PATH+'/config') as f:
        api_key = f.readline().strip()
        api_secret = f.readline().strip()
        access_token = f.readline().strip()
        access_token_secret = f.readline().strip()
        auth = tweepy.OAuthHandler(api_key, api_secret)
        auth.set_access_token(access_token, access_token_secret)
        return tweepy.API(auth)


def get_tweets(username):
    api = get_api()
    tweets = []
    current = api.user_timeline(screen_name=username, count=200)
    tweets.extend(current)
    last_id = tweets[-1].id - 1
    while len(current) > 0:
        current = api.user_timeline(screen_name=username, count=200, max_id=last_id)
        if len(current) > 0:
            tweets.extend(current)
            last_id = tweets[-1].id - 1
    return [[tweet.id_str, tweet.created_at, tweet.text.encode('utf-8')] for tweet in tweets]


if __name__ == '__main__':
    args = get_args()
    tweets = get_tweets(args.username)
    filename = '%s_tweets.csv' % args.username
    print 'Got %d tweets from user %s' % (len(tweets), args.username)
    print
    print 'Writing to CSV file named %s' % filename
    with open(filename, 'wb') as csv_file:
        writer = csv.writer(csv_file)
        writer.writerow(['id', 'created_at', 'text'])
        writer.writerows(tweets)

Hello! I'm currently working on my MA Thesis, and this script promises everything that I need. Unfortunately (and due to my limited programming skills) I can't get it to work. Currently I get an error massage that there is an invalid syntax in this line: "print 'Got %d tweets from user %s' % (len(tweets), args.username)".

As said, I'm completely new to this, but getting it to work on my pc would be extremely beneficial for my research!

@MutsFM 2 years late to this since Gist doesn't give me notifications about comments, but my guess is you installed Python 3 which uses a different syntax for print. In the future, make sure to copy the entire error output you get so others can better help you.

@MutsFM i had the same error using it today, put some parenthesis and it will work.