README.md

Twitterbot

Twitterbot is a simple Python application for:

• reading and parsing a RSS feed and posting its title and links to a Twitter account.
• searching tweets for keywords or hashtags and retweet those tweets.

Both functions (Reading RSS and retweeting) can be used independently. The bot is limited to handle one feed and one Twitter account.

Install

1. Download or git clone Twitterbot:
   • git clone https://github.com/peterdalle/twitterbot
2. Install dependencies feedparser and twython:
   • pip install feedparser
   • pip install twython
3. Create a Twitter application, and generate keys, tokens etc.
4. Modifiy the settings in the source code.
   • Modify feed_url to the RSS feed you want to read.
   • Modify the variables in the TwitterAuth class and add keys, tokens etc. for connecting to your Twitter app.
   • Modify retweet_include_words for keywords you want to search and retweet, and retweet_exclude_words for keywords you would like to exclude from retweeting. For example retweet_include_words = ["foo"] and retweet_exclude_words = ["bar"] will include any tweet with the word "foo", as long as the word "bar" is absent. This list can also be left empty, i.e. retweet_exclude_words = [].

Requirements

• Python 3+
• Twitter account

Usage

Read the RSS feed and post to Twitter account:

$ python twitterbot.py rss

Search for tweets and retweet them:

$ python twitterbot.py rt

Setup crontabs examples

Preferably, you should use crontab to set up Twitterbot to run on a schedule.

crontab examples:

# Read RSS feed every hour and tweet new links.
00 * * * * python twitterbot.py rss

# Rewteet keywords/hashtags every 15 minutes.
*/15 * * * * python twitterbot.py rt

Use the cron schedule expression editor to easily create crons.

Questions

See Questions and answers in the wiki.