Twitter API: simple status update (Python)

Question

I've been looking for a way to update my Twitter status from a Python client. As this client only needs to access one Twitter account, it should be possible to do this with a pre-generated oauth_token and secret, according to http://dev.twitter.com/pages/oauth_single_token

However the sample code does not seem to work, I'm getting 'could not authenticate you' or 'incorrect signature'..

As there are a bunch of different python-twitter library out there (and not all of them are up-to-date) I'd really appreciate if anybody could point me a library that's currently working for POST requests, or post some sample code!

Update: I've tried Pavel's solution, and it works as long as the new message is only one word long, but as soon as it contains spaces, i get this error:

status = api.PostUpdate('hello world')
Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
      File "C:\Python26\lib\site-packages\python_twitter\twitter.py", line 2459, in PostUpdate
        self._CheckForTwitterError(data)
      File "C:\Python26\lib\site-packages\python_twitter\twitter.py", line 3394, in _CheckForTwitterErro
    r
        raise TwitterError(data['error'])
    python_twitter.twitter.TwitterError: Incorrect signature

If however the update is just one word, it works:

status = api.PostUpdate('helloworld')
{'status': 'helloworld'}

Any idea why this might be happening?

Thanks a lot in advance,

Hoff

Answer 1

I've been able to solve this problem using another library - so I'll post my solution here for reference:

import tweepy
# http://dev.twitter.com/apps/myappid
CONSUMER_KEY = 'my consumer key'
CONSUMER_SECRET = 'my consumer secret'
# http://dev.twitter.com/apps/myappid/my_token
ACCESS_TOKEN_KEY= 'my access token key'
ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET= 'my access token secret'

def tweet(status):
    '''
    updates the status of my twitter account
    requires tweepy (https://github.com/joshthecoder/tweepy)
    '''
    if len(status) > 140:
        raise Exception('status message is too long!')
    auth = tweepy.OAuthHandler(CONSUMER_KEY, CONSUMER_SECRET)
    auth.set_access_token(ACCESS_TOKEN_KEY, ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET)
    api = tweepy.API(auth)
    result = api.update_status(status)
    return result

Answer 2

You might be interested in this http://code.google.com/p/python-twitter/

Unfortunately the docs don't exist to be fair and last 'release' was in 2009.

I've used code from the hg:

wget http://python-twitter.googlecode.com/hg/get_access_token.py
wget http://python-twitter.googlecode.com/hg/twitter.py

After (long) app registration process ( http://dev.twitter.com/pages/auth#register ) you should have the Consumer key and secret. They are unique for an app.

Next you need to connect the app with your account, edit the get_access_token.py according to instructions in source (sic!) and run. You should have now the Twitter Access Token key and secret.

>>> import twitter
>>> api = twitter.Api(consumer_key='consumer_key',
            consumer_secret='consumer_secret', access_token_key='access_token',
            access_token_secret='access_token_secret')
>>> status = api.PostUpdate('I love python-twitter!')
>>> print status.text
I love python-twitter!

And it works for me http://twitter.com/#!/pawelprazak/status/16504039403425792 (not sure if it's visible to everyone)

That said I must add that I don't like the code, so if I would gonna use it I'd rewrite it.

EDIT: I've made the example more clear.

Answer 3

The most recent location for Python-Twitter documentation is now on GitHub (which the google code page points you at.)

You now no longer need to use the command line tool that comes with python-twitter to get the full set of access tokens and secrets, https://dev.twitter.com will let you request them when you register your app.

Once you have the four different credential values, the first thing you want to do is test them by making an API test:

api = twitter.Api(consumer_key='consumer_key', consumer_secret='consumer_secret', access_token_key='access_token', access_token_secret='access_token_secret')

print api.VerifyCredentials()

This will show you if your credentials are working or not. If you get an error the next step is to pass in debugHTTP=True to the Api() call - this will cause all of the HTTP conversation to be printed so you can see the Twitter error message.

Once the credentials are working then you can try to call PostUpdate() or even just GetTimeline()

Answer 4

I Have coded some thing related to this question.

import tweepy
consumer_key = Your_consumer_key
consumer_secret = Your_consumer_secret
access_token = Your_access_token
access_token_secret = Your_access_token_secret_key

auth = tweepy.OAuthHandler(consumer_key, consumer_secret)
auth.set_access_token(access_token, access_token_secret)
api = tweepy.API(auth)
single_tweet = 'hello world'
api.update_status(single_tweet)
print "successfully Updated"