This project aims to help configure your Twitter account using a plaintext config file.

You write your own config and then use the tool to configure your accounts follow list, block list, Twitter lists based on the source.

Install

sudo apt-get install python3 python3-pip
pip3 install python-twitter pyyaml

NOTE: Until bear/python-twitter#661 is resolved I install my python-twitter fork which fixes a bug for lists with >100 people:

pip3 install -e git+git://github.com/OliverCardoza/python-twitter.git@master#egg=python-twitter

Usage Instructions

Set up

To use the script you will need to configure a Twitter application to access the Twitter API. Collecting the varius keys, secrets, and tokens is outlined on the python-twitter documentation here:

https://python-twitter.readthedocs.io/en/latest/getting_started.html

This is a bit of a pain but shouldn't take more than 5 - 10 minutes. Once you have collected the relevant tokens make a copy of secrets_example.yaml called secrets.yaml and copy your keys there:

cp secrets_example.yaml secrets.yaml
vim secrets.yaml

Download Account data

Download your account data to a config file, e.g. twitter.yaml

python3 main.py download twitter.yaml

This is the recommended starting point for your config file by basing it on pre-existing data you've already configured. Now you can make edits to this config file and use it to configure your Twitter account by uploading it as described in the next section.

Syncing Account config

This process will synchronize your account data between your config file and that returned by the Twitter API. Actions to synchronize the two versions will be proposed and performed based on confirmation dialogs [y/n]. The resulting data can then be optionally written back to your config file.

python3 main.py sync twitter.yaml

Caveats

The following are the primary caveats one should think about before using this script:

• limited field support (e.g. blocks, list descriptions not yet supported)
• quirky handling of list name change logic (e.g. old list deleted, new list created)
• does not gracefully handle @username changes
• updating list privacy isn't yet supported (e.g. public <-> private)
• the sync command does not attempt to synchronize your meta-lists

New Features

Meta-lists

A meta-list is a dynamic list composed of other lists. One use case might be if you would like a catch-all "Gaming" list to be composed of everyone on your "Starcraft" and "R6 Siege" lists. It would be tedious to have to add a new follow, for example @SC2ByuN to both "Starcraft" and "Gaming" lists. Instead this can be accomplished using a meta-list definition:

lists:
- name: Starcraft
  is_private: true
  members:
  - username: ENCE_Serral
  - username: LowkoTV
  - username: SC2ByuN
- name: R6 Siege
  is_private: true
  members:
  - username: MacieJayGaming
  - username: DARUSSIANBADGER
meta_lists:
- name: "META: Gaming"
  is_private: true
  lists:
  - Starcraft
  - R6 Siege

There are a number of ways I could have implemented nested lists. I chose the current way for simplicity and ease of implementation.

Requirements:

• meta-list name must start with "META"
• meta-list can only include other lists, no direct members
• meta-lists are ignored during "download" operation

Tests

To run tests:

python3 -m unittest