For this project, these include: import osįrom urllib.parse import urljoin, urlparseĪfter you’re all set there, we then need to authorize our API. To get started, I always import all packages I’m going to need first. Just for some insight, with this specific code, I will be using Tweepy to get Tweet information from a specific third-party news source (ZDNet), and then use the link previews from the Tweets to scrape each article for main images using BeautifulSoup, and then save them to a folder on my computer. To use this library, along with the Twitter API, make sure to stick this code into your terminal: pip install TwitterAPIĪlright, now for the fun part. There’s a really good article on all the different things Tweepy is capable of that you can read more on here. Tweepy makes it super easy for you to scan Twitter for data based on a specific hashtag, an individual user, what’s trending in a specific location… plus a ton more. There are a couple of different libraries you can use to access the Twitter API, but my personal favorite is Tweepy. I got verified less than 24 hours after applying, but it varies for everyone. The more detailed you can be on your application, the easier it’ll go through. It’s relatively straightforward, and in the application, you will just need to tell Twitter your purposes for wanting to use their API. First Things Firstīefore you can use Twitter’s API, you first need to apply for a Twitter Developer account. For the purpose of this article, though, I’m going to go over some Tweepy basics, how to extract Tweet information, and also how to scrape preview links from tweets for their images using BeautifulSoup and a couple of functions. I’ve had the opportunity to play around a ton with Tweepy, and realized you can do some pretty sweet things with it including sentiment analysis, which I will touch on in the future. The best part about Twitter is that we can easily manipulate this information in my favorite coding language, Python, by using Twitter’s API and a simple package called Tweepy. It’s like having access to tabloid magazines, the inside of your favorite academics’ brain, or the inside scoop on the (occasionally way too) personal thoughts of both your peers and complete strangers.Īnd that’s what makes it so, so wonderful.

But more in a, “Wow, Twitter is a data powerhouse” type of way. Not in a, “I spend all my free time scrolling” type of way.

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