Using tweepy to stream users' timeline and filtered tweets

Question

I started exploring tweepy a couple days ago and was able to stream filtered (with keywords) tweets at real time. Now I want to stream not only filtered tweets but also tweets from several specific twitter users. Is this possible by using tweepy? It seems stream.userstream() only fetches real-time tweets from my twitter account NOT from other specific users, right? I have tried it with another twitter account that I created for testing but it does not fetch any new tweets that I tweeted, at all.

But if it works, can I download tweets using stream.userstream() and stream.filter() at the same time? If not then how can I get both filtered tweets and users' real time tweets?

Btw I used the example code from @alexhanna.

api      = tweepy.API(auth)

def main( mode = 1 ):
follow = []
track  = ['Houston Rockets','Lakers','Chicago Bulls']

listen = SListener(api, 'test')
stream = tweepy.Stream(auth, listen)

try: 
    stream.userstream('NBA','ESPN')
    stream.filter(track = track, follow = follow)

except:
    print "error!"
    stream.disconnect()

Would really appreciate your help! Thanks.

Answer 1

Try using the .filter(follow="") without .userstream() beforehand. Userstream is only the tweets from the account associated with your application. Here is a (very well-annotated) example.

If you want to get the user's tweets and filtered tweets at the same time you need to make two separate Stream() objects.

Edit: the page I linked to is now dead. The Internet Archive link should remain active indefinitely, but all the relevant information to solving the user's question is already contained within this answer. I have not copied and pasted the example from the linked page as I am not the author of it, and because it is only an example that illustrates the proper use of a Stream listener.

Answer 2

If you want to stream specific user time-line:

1) Find his/her ID with this website or google for How to find twitter ID.

2) Use following code:

    from tweepy import OAuthHandler
    from tweepy import Stream
    from tweepy import StreamListener

    listener = StreamListener()
    auth = OAuthHandler(config.API_KEY, config.API_SECRET)
    auth.set_access_token(config.ACCESS_TOKEN, config.ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET)
    stream = Stream(auth, listener)
    stream.filter(follow=['3511430425']) # user ID for random account

Answer 3

You can fetch a particular users tweets in real time as per the below code sample.

import tweepy
from tweepy import OAuthHandler, Stream, StreamListener

username="maheshmnj" # Add your target users username here
userId=12345678 # Add target users userId 

class TweetListener(StreamListener):
    """ A listener handles tweets that are received in real time.  """

    def on_data(self, status):
        try:
            data = json.loads(status)
            user = data['user']['screen_name']
            tweet_id = data['id']
            if(user == f'{username}'):
                print(f'user tweeted, his tweetId=@{tweet_id} do something with the Tweet'); 
            else:
                print('found user',user)
        except Exception as e:
            print(e)
            print('failed to retweet')
        return True

    def on_error(self, status_code):
        if status_code == 420:
            # returning False in on_data disconnects the stream
            return False
        print(status_code)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    print(f'bot started listening to {username}')
    listen = TweetListener()
    auth = tweepy.OAuthHandler(APP_KEY, APP_SECRET)
    auth.set_access_token(ACCESS_TOKEN, ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET)
    api = tweepy.API(auth)
    stream = Stream(auth, listen)
    stream.filter(follow=[userId],)