populate.py

#
# retrieves 10 pages of search json near:austin
#
# usage:
# python populate.py <search term>
#

from pprint import pprint
import simplejson as json
import urllib, urllib2
import sys

query = 'near:austin %s' % (" ".join(sys.argv[1:]))
url = 'http://search.twitter.com/search.json'
base_params = {'geocode': '30.268735,-97.745209,25km',
               'q': query,
               'since_id': 0}

tweets = []

for p in range(1, 10):
    params = base_params
    params['page'] = p
    params = urllib.urlencode(params)

    f = urllib.urlopen(url, params)
    contents = f.read()

    info = json.loads(contents)

    if 'results' in info:
        tweets += info['results']

print json.dumps(tweets)