Learn Python Via Tweepy

If you're here just for the authorization code, skip down to Authorizing Our Twitter App

Today we're going to learn the basics of Python, via Python Anywhere. Python is language that doesn't come on all computers, so Python Anywhere lets us use it without the pain of installing it manually.

_If you're interested in installing Python on your local machine, you can do so here. it's worth noting that Mac OS has Python 2.7 preinstalled on their machines, but we'll be using Python 3.6. _

Setting Up Our Project

First, we need to set up an account on Python Anywhere. You don't even need to confirm your email.

Once you have an account, go to the Files tab, and make a new file called myScriptName.py (you can replace myScriptName with whatever, just make sure it ends in .py).

With the file open, let's walk through a basic example of a Python script.

Python is a cool language that simplifies a lot of things about code. We won't go into detail about how python works in this tutorial, but here's a sample script that will iterate through 15 numbers, and output the square for all of those numbers, with a special message for number 10:

for a in range(15):
    b = a * a
    if a == 10:
        print ("You should already know that 10 squared is 100, dummy!")
    else:
        print ("%d squared is equal to %d!" % (a, b))

Just hit RUN to check it out!

Authorizing our Twitter App

IMPORTANT: Twitter doesn't like spammy twitter profiles, and I don't want to get this account suspended! I'm giving you authorization to post on the account, and every time you run api.update_status successfully, it will send out a tweet. I'm asking that you please limit your posts to 2 tweets per 10 minutes. The twitter limit is 100 tweets/hour, and I don't want us to get banned!

Here's the twitter account this code is hooked up to: @mic_drop_bot. I used him for an old old hackathon project.

Once you've read that, you may run the following code to tweet something:

# This line imports the library Tweepy, which is pre-installed in PythonAnywhere
import tweepy

# I generated these keys at http://apps.twitter.com
# Note that you need a twitter account with a validated phone number for this
# Please don't abuse this info! 
#
consumer_key = 'msLJGoIZx7hMxWv6eszGGOBfi'
consumer_secret = 'azXQeRpFj9Wowfnrhj1M4CcMgVm5Kp9SXhppPNx26MfLHHivUA'
access_token = '3914186835-ml58nTscOP4TbwuDK1U2aA0YiA1PtlOjlUMPrJH'
access_token_secret = 'JqJdbB4Hj9U52iiEQ1yxDpn2xPxMs0wlx8i3ncCna75LE'

auth = tweepy.OAuthHandler(consumer_key, consumer_secret)
auth.set_access_token(access_token, access_token_secret)
api = tweepy.API(auth)


# Below are some examples of what we can now do -- just uncomment the relevant lines to run

tweet = """
My First Automated Tweet -- hello world!
"""
# Uncomment the next line to send the above tweet:

# api.update_status(status=tweet)

# Uncomment the next line to follow the twitter user @username:

# api.create_friendship('username')

# Uncomment the next 3 lines to print the last 20ish tweets from @_hacksu:

# tweets = api.user_timeline('_hacksu')
# for i in tweets:
#     print (i.text)