A simple script to stream data from Twitter. Twizzer streams data with a given set of filters, then strips out the text fields and appends a datetime to them which it streams to stdout and to a file simultaneously. (Script is based on the work of Youtube user Sentdex, with modifications suggested by Youtube user Satish Chandra and some of my own…

Twizzer-v0.0.1.py

#! /usr/bin/env python

# Twizzer-0-0-1.py: Simple script for pulling streaming data from Twitter using 
# the credentials of a given user. You will need a developer account for this
# to work, because of the way Twitter API 1.1 handles authentication etc. This script is 
# based on a very similar script, by YouTube user SentDex, but with some modifcations
# suggested by YouTube user Satish Chandra, and some of my own to resolve stdout encoding
# issues, and user interaction.
# 
# ROADMAP
# The next version, Twizzer-0-0-1.py will include more user interaction code, including 
# some basic GUI elements, and the user will be able to choose the filters used by the 
# program.

# Imports/general tools
import time

# Imports/general tools/encoding stdout
import sys
import codecs

# Import JSON parsing tools
import json

# Imports/tweepy specific
from tweepy import Stream
from tweepy import OAuthHandler
from tweepy.streaming import StreamListener

# Credentials
consumer_key = 'place-consumer-key-here'
consumer_secret = 'place-consumer-secret-here'
access_token = 'place-access-token-here'
access_secret = 'place-access-secret-here'

# To prevent encoding errors (charmap codec errors, etc) in the stdout stream
sys.stdout = codecs.getwriter('utf8')(sys.stdout)

# Prompt for user input
filename = raw_input("\nEnter a name for the output file: ")

# Information for user
print "Please wait. Connecting and authenticating now...\n"
print "#########################################################################"
print "Please note that search keywords are hard-wired until further"
print "notice. If you want to change them, you will have to open the program"
print "file and change them there!"
print "#########################################################################\n"

# Twizzer stream class
class listener(StreamListener):

	def on_data(self, data):
		try:
			
			jsonData = json.loads(data)
			
			# alternative approach using json library (suggested by Satish Chandra)
			createdAt = jsonData['created_at']
			text = jsonData['text']


			# concatenate the timestamp, an arbitrary separator and the text of the tweet
			saveThis = createdAt+'=>'+text

			# print to stdout
			print saveThis

			# open file for writing, in append mode so that updates don't erase previous work
			saveFile = open(filename+'.csv', 'a')
			
			# set file encoding to utf-8 and write to file
			saveFile.write(saveThis.encode('utf-8'))
			saveFile.write('\n')
			saveFile.close()
			return True
		except BaseException, e:
			print 'failed ondata, ', str(e)
			time.sleep(5)

	def on_error(self, status):
		print status

# The meat of the script, authentication first, then streaming
auth = OAuthHandler(consumer_key, consumer_secret)
auth.set_access_token(access_token, access_secret)

twizzer = Stream(auth, listener())

# Set the search terms here! As far as I
# can tell, adding multiple terms inside:
#        track=['term1', 'term2', 'term_n']
# returns the results of a Boolean OR
twizzer.filter(track=['car'])