Tweeter Stats

Copyright © 2015 Amit Shekhar Bongir

This is a simple and fun to run script, where stats imply a tweeter's 3 most :

1. Retweeted tweets
2. Frequently used hashtags
3. Frequently used tweet words
   You can also use this script as a module for getting a tweeter's data. See Use as a module below.

Building

This script is compatible with Python 3.4 or higher. It imports 5 modules : tweepy, json, os, stat, re; 4 of which are a part of the Python Library except tweepy, which you may need to install. For Linux based systems type the command:

sudo apt-get install python-tweepy

The script makes use of Twitter's REST API using tweepy to fetch tweeter data. You need to authorize this script as an app in your twitter account to get 4 important things:

1. Access token
2. Access token secret
3. Consumer key
4. Consumer key secret
   which you will fill in the necessary places in main in tweeter_stats.py. This site will easily show you the steps to get them. When step 5 is reached, you may fill the application details as follows :
   Name : Tweeter Stats
   Description : Collects some interesting stats of a twitter user
   Website : https://github.com/amitbongir/Tweeter-Stats

Ensure that the computer is connected to the Internet. Then run the script with :

python3 tweeter_stats.py

In case you are receiving error, please check that you have entered valid username. If yes then check whether you have filled the above 4 tokens/keys properly at the correct places. And check if the Internet connection is established properly. Still the errors popup, then they are actually valid provided a stable version of tweepy is installed.

Use as a module

You can use this script as a module tweeter_stats and use the TweeterUser class defined in it. You can get all the data collected by its objects by calling getData() function defined in it. It returns a Python dict (Refer the file "keys" for the dict's keys.) The data of all users collected through the objects are all saved in JSON format files in Tweeters_Data directory (created after atleast one tweeter's data is collected) in read-only format. The files are named in the form of username_stats.json.

Entering username of tweeter

You can give the username of the tweeter dynamically at runtime or statically as argument to the constructor of the TweeterUser class. (See commented lines in main in tweeter_stats.py for the static arguments)

Considering retweeted tweets

By default, the script considers only tweets made by the tweeter but not the ones he/she retweeted. By static arguments as discussed above, you can make the script consider the tweets retweeted by the tweeter also.

Methodology of fetching tweets

1. For a tweeter whose data was not previously collected, all his/her tweets are fetched.
2. For a tweeter whose data was previously collected, only the tweets that were posted after the previous collected tweets are collected, say n tweets. If n is less than 200, then (200 - n) of the most recent of the previous collected tweets are collected once again. This methodology ensures that we :

• fetch the latest tweets with their current retweet count.
• save unnecessary downloading and time.

License

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.