content/projects/grabtweets.html @ bba73143f4b1

{% extends "_post.html" %}

{% hyde
    title: "grabtweets"
    snip: "A simple tool for backing up your tweets."
    created: 2009-09-12 11:02:46
    categories: ["programming"]
%}

{% block article %}

`grabtweets` is a simple tool to backup your tweets.

The code is in a [Mercurial repository][repository] on [BitBucket][].

[BitBucket]: http://bitbucket.org/

[TOC]

Installing
----------

`grabtweets` requires [Python][] 2.6 or later.

To install it, you can [download][] the latest version, or clone the Mercurial
repository:

    :::text
    hg clone http://bitbucket.org/sjl/grabtweets/

You can put it anywhere you like.

Using
-----

`grabtweets` can back up your tweets and print tweets that it has already
archived.

### Backing Up Tweets

To back up your tweets, run `grabtweets` like this:

    :::console
    $ grabtweets.py -u USERNAME FILE

`grabtweets` will pull down the 200 newest tweets from USERNAME and store them
in FILE.

You probably have more than 200 tweets. However, Twitter will only let you
pull down 200 at a time and hitting the server too fast will result in Twitter
cutting off your access for a while.

To deal with this, it's best to set up `grabtweets` as a cron/launchd job that
runs every couple of hours. Each time it runs, it will pull down the newest
200 tweets, plus 200 older tweets if there are any available.

It will take about `NUMBER_OF_TWEETS_YOU_HAVE/200` runs to finish archiving
your tweets. Just set it up and forget about it.

### Printing Backed Up Tweets

To print the tweets that `grabtweets` has already backed up, run it like this:

    :::console
    $ grabtweets.py -p FILE

[Python]: {{links.python}}
[download]: http://bitbucket.org/sjl/grabtweets/get/tip.zip

Problems, Contributing, etc
---------------------------

`grabtweets` was hacked together in an hour. There are probably bugs. If you
find any, go ahead and create an issue in the [issue tracker][].

Want to fix something or add a feature? Great! Fork the [repository][] and
send me a pull request.

[issue tracker]: http://bitbucket.org/sjl/grabtweets/issues/?status=new&status=open
[repository]: http://bitbucket.org/sjl/grabtweets/

{% endblock %}