This challenge write-up first appeared on PyBites.

This week, each one of you has a homework assignment ... - Tyler Durden (Fight club)

Write a class to retrieve tweets from the Twitter API

In this 3 part challenge you will analyze Twitter Data. This week we will automate the retrieval of data. In Part 2 we will task you with finding similar tweeters, and for Part 3 you will do a full sentiment analysis.

Get ready

Start coding by forking our challenges repo:

$ git clone https://github.com/pybites/challenges

If you already forked it sync it:

# assuming using ssh key
$ git remote add upstream [email protected]:pybites/challenges.git 
$ git fetch upstream
# if not on master: 
$ git checkout master 
$ git merge upstream/master

Setup virtual environment and install requirements

$ cd 04
$ python3 -m venv venv
# = py3 (might need virtualenv for py2 env)

$ source venv/bin/activate 
# install tweepy (and its depencencies)
$ pip install -r requirements.txt

# if you want to use another package like twython, feel free to do so

# get your API keys from Twitter - https://apps.twitter.com 
$ cp config-template.py config.py
# paste the keys in config.py

# choose a template
$ cp usertweets-help.py usertweets.py
# or 
$ cp usertweets-nohelp.py usertweets.py
# code

The challenge

• Define a class called UserTweets that takes a Twitter handle / user in its constructor. it also receives an optional max_id parameter to start from a particular tweet id.

• Create a tweepy API object using the tokens imported from config.py (again, you can use another package if you prefer).

• Create an instance variable to hold the last 100 tweets of the user.

• Implement len() and getitem() magic (dunder) methods to make the UserTweets object iterable.

• Save the generated data as CSV in the data subdirectory: data/some_handle.csv, columns: id_str,created_at,text

Background

• We posted two articles this week you might find useful in this context: oop primer and Python's data model.

• If you decide to use Tweepy, you might want to check its API reference.

Tests

For developers that like to work towards tests we included test_usertweets.py:

$ python test_usertweets.py
...
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 3 tests in 0.001s

OK

Example output

We used a namedtuple here, this is not required. Also note the tweets can differ, yet in the unittests we test a fix set (using the optional max_id parameter in the constructor):

$ python
>>> from usertweets import UserTweets
>>> pybites = UserTweets('pybites')
>>> len(pybites)
100
>>> pybites[0]
Tweet(id_str='825629570992726017', created_at=datetime.datetime(2017, 1, 29, 9, 0, 3), text='Twitter digest 2017 week 04 https://t.co/L3njBuBats #python')
>>> ^D
(venv) [bbelderb@macbook 04 (master)]$ ls -lrth data/
...
-rw-r--r--  1 bbelderb  staff    14K Jan 29 21:49 pybites.csv
(venv) [bbelderb@macbook 04 (master)]$ head -3 data/pybites.csv
id_str,created_at,text
825629570992726017,2017-01-29 09:00:03,Twitter digest 2017 week 04 https://t.co/L3njBuBats #python
825267189162733569,2017-01-28 09:00:05,Code Challenge 03 - PyBites blog tag analysis - Review https://t.co/xvcLQBbvup #python

Good luck!

Remember: there is no best solution, only learning more and better Python.

Enjoy and we're looking forward reviewing on Friday all the cool / creative / Pythonic stuff you come up with.

Have fun!

Again to start coding fork our challenges repo or sync it.

About PyBites Code Challenges

More background in our first challenge article.