Retrieve Tweet replies

This Python script pulls all direct replies to a specified Tweet, extracts user mentions from the replies, and returns a list of usernames ordered by most to least frequently mentioned in the replies.

This script uses v2 of the Twitter API, and more specifically:

• Search Tweets
• Tweets lookup

Additional details on how to run this code, including instructions on how to replace the full-archive search endpoint with the recent search endpoint, are available here.

Requirements

• Twitter developer account.
• Developer Project and App with access to the v2 full-archive search endpoint: GET /2/tweets/search/all.

You can read more about getting access to all of the above in Twitter's developer docs.

Authentication & set up

Rename .env_example to .env and add the credentials for your developer App in between the "".

TWITTER_CONSUMER_KEY=""
TWITTER_CONSUMER_SECRET=""
TWITTER_ACCESS_TOKEN=""
TWITTER_ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET=""
TWITTER_BEARER_TOKEN=""

Don't forget to add .env to your .gitignore file to keep your credentials secure.

You will also need to install the requests and python-dotenv Python modules:

$ pip3 install requests python-dotenv

Running the script

$ python3 replies.py -t <TWEET-ID>

Flags
-t	Tweet ID	Required	ID of the Tweet for which you want to pull data.
-h	Help	Optional	View a list of available flags and a description for each of these.
-s	Start time	Optional	The oldest UTC timestamp from which the replies will be provided. Format: YYYY-MM-DDTHH:mm:ssZ; for example: 2021-12-04T01:30:00Z. If unspecified, will default to returning replies from up to 30 days ago.
-e	End time	Optional	The newest, most recent UTC timestamp to which the replies will be provided. Format: YYYY-MM-DDTHH:mm:ssZ; for example: 2021-12-04T01:30:00Z. If unspecified, will default to [now - 30 seconds].

Run the following command to see a list of available flags:

$ python3 replies.py -h

Output

Returned in the command line interface

• Ordered dictionary containing: a list of all usernames present in the replies and the number of times each username was mentioned. Note: the username who authored the original Tweet is not included.
• Number of replies to the Tweet.
• Number of usernames mentioned in these replies.
• Total request count made to the Search API to get these replies.

Returned in a new file

• replies.txt containing a list of Tweet IDs for the replies.