This is a Python 3 fork of twecoll by @jdevoo. The original twecoll isn't maintained anymore, but jdevoo created nucoll in Go.

Twecoll3 is a Twitter command-line tool written in Python. It can be used to retrieve data from Twitter.

Installation

$ pip install twecoll3

Twecoll uses oauth and has been updated to support the 1.1 version of the Twitter REST API. Register your own copy of twecoll3 on http://apps.twitter.com and copy the consumer key and secret.

The first time you run a twecoll3 command, it will ask you for the consumer key and consumer secret. It will then retrieve the oauth token. Follow the instructions on the console.

Examples

Downloading Tweets

Twecoll3 can download up to 3200 tweets for a handle or run search queries (limited to the last 7-10 days).

$ twecoll3 tweets luca

This would generate a luca.tweets.jsonl file containing all tweets. In order search for tweets related to a certain hashtag or run a more advanced query, use the -q switch and quotes around the query string:

$ twecoll3 tweets -q "#hashtag"

This will also generate a .tweets.jsonl file name with the url-encoded search string.

Generating a Graph

A retweet network can be generated without further data collection. This works for a user as well as a search query. Retweet network of a user is quite useless.

$ twecoll3 network luca

If you want to generate a follow network, you first need to generate a file containing the included users. Then fetch their followings (limited to 5k followings per default; 15 accounts per 15 minutes) and finally generate the network:

$ twecoll3 init luca
$ twecoll3 fetch luca
$ twecoll3 edgelist luca

Usage

Twecoll3 has built-in help. Each command can also be invoked with the help switch for additional information about its sub-options.

$ twecoll3 --help
usage: twecoll3 [--help]
               {init,fetch,tweets,likes,network,edgelist} ...

Twitter Collection Tool

optional arguments:
    --help            show this help message and exit


sub-commands:
  {resolve,init,fetch,tweets,likes,edgelist}
    assistant           step by step for new users
    resolve             retrieve user_id for screen_name or vice versa
    init                retrieve friends data for screen_name
    fetch               retrieve friends of handles in .dat file
    tweets              retrieve tweets
    network             generate retweet graph in GEXF format
    edgelist            generate follow graph in GDF format

Changes

• Version 2.0.1 - Removed language attribute because Twitter doesn't provide it anymore.
• Version 2.0 - Rewrite to support Python 3.