Consume streaming tweets from Twitter

[keithamoss]

Tweepy looks good.

We'll need to handle:

• Disconnecting if we get a 402 (too many connection attempts in a short period of time) and somehow alerting us.
• Store the Twitter API authorization tokens in the database.
• Automatically starting a stream if there's an election on (so that we can restart the app and have things Just Work).
• Stopping an old stream if a new one has just connected. Or, not starting a new stream until the old one has disconnected).
• A means to start/stop streaming.
• Not writing duplicate tweets (if two apps are running at once).
• Tweet compliance
• Fill in gaps

Required database tables:

• A table to hold credentials
• A table to hold the uuid of the current 'master' application (used for CD and start/stop)
• A table to hold any errors (clearable by admins) or logs (e.g. LIMIT notices)
• A table to hold tweets

Documentation:
Streaming With Tweepy
Consuming streaming data
Streaming message types
Filter realtime Tweets
Standard streaming API request parameters

Some potentially useful results for the future:
Twitter Stream re-connect best practices (For python-twitter, not Tweepy - but the principles are the same.)
Tweepy. Make stream run forever
Twitter Streaming API limits?