How to get tweet IDs (since_id, max_id) in tweepy (python)?

Question

I want to know a way of getting tweet IDs to keep a check on what tweets have been displayed in the timeline of user in the python app I am making using tweepy.

There doesn't seem to be a way I get extract the tweet IDs or keep track of them. The parameter to keep check is since_id. Please if anyone could help.

Solution 1

The tweepy library follows the twitter API closely. All attributes returned by that API are available on the result objects; so for status messages you need to look at the tweet object description to see they have an id parameter:

for status in api.user_timeline():
    print status.id

Store the most recent id to poll for updates.

Solution 2

The max_id and since_id are parameters for the api.user_timeline() method.

Using the tweepy.Cursor() object might look something like this:

    tweets = []
    for tweet in tweepy.Cursor(api.user_timeline,
                       screen_name=<twitter_handle>,
                       since_id = <since_id>
                       ).items(<count>):
        tweets.append(tweet)

Comments

[Liam]

what is the api.user_timeline?

[Martijn Pieters]

@Liam: the Twitter statuses/user_timeline collection. Also see the Tweepy API documentation.

[semiflex]

But where do you insert the since_id and max_id in the for loop?

[Martijn Pieters]

@KrishanVadher: did you look at the documentation I linked to in my last comment?

[semiflex]

I did. I still can't seem to pull tweets after a certain status ID. This is what I have at the moment. How would I change it: max_id = 724916468975046656 for status in tweepy.Cursor(api.user_timeline,twitter).items(count).items(‌​max_id):

[Martijn Pieters]

@KrishanVadher: .items(num) limits the number of items retured; it does not let you find items before a given tweet ID. I'm not familiar with the Tweepy Cursor API however; perhaps you want to create a new question for this.

[Martijn Pieters]

@KrishanVadher: so this is now worthy of a downvote? Because I couldn't help you in the comments? The answer doesn't use Tweepy Cursors.

[semiflex]

Ohh urr. That wasn't me.

[Martijn Pieters]

@KrishanVadher: If that's the case then you have my apologies on that. This is an answer from almost 4 years ago with little activity, a sudden downvote very close to some follow-up comments certainly gives the impression that the two events are related.

[Danijel-James W]

This would look better if you formatted your inline a bit better with the multi-line tweepy.Cursor()

[Jared Wilber]

@Danijel-JamesW feel free to edit! Current formatting is according to my pep8 linter :)

[Shahir Ansari]

the since_id and max_id parameter are not working. No matter what id you put in there,it always return tweet replies from the latest tweet.