eoinhurrell / oreb

A small script to archive tweets using the Twitter API

Oreb

"Fish heads?"

In prep for the failwhale.

To get Twitter API details

• Go to https://developer.twitter.com and sign up if needed.
• In Projects & Apps, click Add App, then Create New.
• Choose Development.
• Name it whatever you’d like, but oreb would match the repo name.
• Finish setup. You will be taken to the app’s dashboard.
• Under Authentication Tokens is a section labeled Access Token and Secret. It should have a little subhed that says For @your_twitter_handle. Click Generate.
• Copy the API Key and paste it inside the quotes in the config.yml file you made on the line labeled consumer_key. It should look like consumer_key: "what-you-copied".
• Copy the API Key Secret and paste it inside the quotes next to consumer_secret.
• Copy the Access Token and paste it inside the quotes next to access_token_key.
• Copy the Access Token Secret and paste it inside the quotes next to access_token_secret.

How to use

To begin with you need Python. Probably the easiest way to get set up with Python is to download and install Anaconda Python for your OS.

Download this repo into its own directory (I'll call it )

Open a terminal, run

cd <DIRECTORY>
pip install pdm
pdm install

Now, open the config.yml file and input the details of the user whose tweets you want to backup, and the Twitter API details you've created for yourself.

pdm run collect collects tweets, and saves them as tweepy objects. They will be stored in <DIRECTORY>/tweets/<user_name>/pickle

pdm run render renders all the collected tweets in a maybe awkward way, and downloads the media associated with them, if possible. They will be stored in <DIRECTORY>/tweets/<user_name>/renders, one folder per day, with each folder containing a content.txt, which contains the tweet, and a media folder, which contains any images attached to tweets. A known issue is that it only gets the first image uploaded of a group.