bmtu.py is a very, very simple Twitter backup tool. Most tools that I found online either did a lot of things and pulled in many dependencies (Tweetnest), basically didn't handle errors at all (most shell and Python recipies), or weren't designed for running more than once.
bmtu.py only depends on Python and libraries that ship with Ubuntu's python package. It requires Python 2.6 or above, and SQLite3. It handles most errors by giving up, and uses transactions to handle errors without corruption.
On performing a fetch, it checks for tweets newer and older than what is stored in the database. It will only pull in 20 new tweets, so it should be run from a cron. Way up there on the TODO list is performing pagination on importing new tweets.
Currently bmtu.py will use two unauthenticated API calls per hour doing nothing, and an additional call per block of 20 tweets downloaded.
# Create a database.
$ python bmtu.py init insom
# Perform the initial import.
$ python bmtu.py fetch insom
# Add to an hourly cron.
0 * * * * python bmtu.py fetch insom
Copyright (c) 2010, Aaron Brady
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