#Twitter Bot

A Python bot that automates several actions on Twitter, such as following users and favoriting tweets.

##Disclaimer

I hold no liability for what you do with this bot or what happens to you by using this bot. Abusing this bot can get you banned from Twitter, so make sure to read up on proper usage of the Twitter API.

##Installation

You can install the Twitter Follow Bot using pip:

pip install TwitterFollowBot

##Dependencies

You will need to install Python's python-twitter library:

pip install twitter

Although this library should be installed along with the Twitter Follow Bot if you used pip.

You will also need to create an app account on https://dev.twitter.com/apps

1. Sign in with your Twitter account
2. Create a new app account
3. Modify the settings for that app account to allow read & write
4. Generate a new OAuth token with those permissions

Following these steps will create 4 tokens that you will need to place in the configuration file discussed below.

##Usage

###Configuring the bot

Before running the bot, you must first set it up so it can connect to the Twitter API. Create a config.txt file and fill in the following information:

OAUTH_TOKEN:
OAUTH_SECRET:
CONSUMER_KEY:
CONSUMER_SECRET:
TWITTER_HANDLE:
ALREADY_FOLLOWED_FILE:already-followed.txt
FOLLOWERS_FILE:followers.txt
FOLLOWS_FILE:following.txt
USERS_KEEP_FOLLOWING:
USERS_KEEP_UNMUTED:
USERS_KEEP_MUTED:
FOLLOW_BACKOFF_MIN_SECONDS:10
FOLLOW_BACKOFF_MAX_SECONDS:60

OAUTH_TOKEN, OAUTH_SECRET, CONSUMER_KEY, CONSUMER_SECRET are your API keys that you received from creating your app account. TWITTER_HANDLE is your Twitter name, case-sensitive.

You can change the FILE entries if you want to store that information in a specific location on your computer. By default, the files will be created in your current directory.

Add comma-separated Twitter user IDs to the USERS_KEEP entries to:

• USERS_KEEP_FOLLOWING: Keep following these users even if they don't follow you back.

• USERS_KEEP_UNMUTED: Keep these users unmuted (i.e., you receive a mobile notification when they tweet)

• USERS_KEEP_MUTED: Keep these users muted (i.e., you don't receive a mobile notification when they tweet)

For example:

...
FOLLOWS_FILE:following.txt
USERS_KEEP_FOLLOWING:1234,1235,1236
USERS_KEEP_UNMUTED:
...

You can look up a users' Twitter ID here.

###Create an instance of the bot

To create an instance of the bot:

from TwitterFollowBot import TwitterBot

my_bot = TwitterBot()

By default, the bot will look for a configuration file called config.txt in your current directory.

If you want to use a different configuration file, pass the configuration file to the bot as follows:

from TwitterFollowBot import TwitterBot

my_bot = TwitterBot("my-other-bot-config.txt")

Note that this allows you to run multiple instances of the bot with different configurations, for example if you run multiple Twitter accounts:

from TwitterFollowBot import TwitterBot

my_bot = TwitterBot()
my_other_bot = TwitterBot("my-other-bot-config.txt")

###Syncing your Twitter following locally

Due to Twitter API rate limiting, the bot must maintain a local cache of all of your followers so it doesn't use all of your API time looking up your followers. It is highly recommended to sync the bot's local cache daily:

from TwitterFollowBot import TwitterBot

my_bot = TwitterBot()
my_bot.sync_follows()

The bot will create cache files where you specified in the configuration file.

DO NOT delete the cache files ("followers.txt", "follows.txt", and "already-followed.txt" by default) unless you want to start the bot over with a fresh cache.

###Automating Twitter actions with the bot

This bot has several functions for programmatically interacting with Twitter:

####Automatically follow any users that tweet something with a specific phrase

from TwitterFollowBot import TwitterBot

my_bot = TwitterBot()
my_bot.auto_follow("phrase")

You can also search based on hashtags:

from TwitterFollowBot import TwitterBot

my_bot = TwitterBot()
my_bot.auto_follow("#hashtag")

By default, the bot looks up the 100 most recent tweets. You can change this number with the count parameter:

from TwitterFollowBot import TwitterBot

my_bot = TwitterBot()
my_bot.auto_follow("phrase", count=1000)

####Automatically follow any users that have followed you

from TwitterFollowBot import TwitterBot

my_bot = TwitterBot()
my_bot.auto_follow_followers()

####Automatically follow any users that follow a user

from TwitterFollowBot import TwitterBot

my_bot = TwitterBot() 
my_bot.auto_follow_followers_of_user("jack", count=1000)

####Automatically favorite any tweets that have a specific phrase

from TwitterFollowBot import TwitterBot

my_bot = TwitterBot()
my_bot.auto_fav("phrase", count=1000)

####Automatically retweet any tweets that have a specific phrase

from TwitterFollowBot import TwitterBot

my_bot = TwitterBot()
my_bot.auto_rt("phrase", count=1000)

####Automatically unfollow any users that have not followed you back

from TwitterFollowBot import TwitterBot

my_bot = TwitterBot()
my_bot.auto_unfollow_nonfollowers()

If there are certain users that you would like to not unfollow, add their user id to the USERS_KEEP_FOLLOWING list.

You will need to manually edit the code if you want to add special users that you will keep following even if they don't follow you back.

####Automatically unfollow all users.

from TwitterFollowBot import TwitterBot

my_bot = TwitterBot()
my_bot.auto_unfollow_all_followers()

####Automatically mute all users that you have followed

from TwitterFollowBot import TwitterBot

my_bot = TwitterBot()
my_bot.auto_mute_following()

You will need to manually edit the code if you want to add special users that you will not mute.

####Automatically unmute everyone you have muted

from TwitterFollowBot import TwitterBot

my_bot = TwitterBot()
my_bot.auto_unmute()

You will need to manually edit the code if you want to add special users that will remain muted.

####Post a tweet on twitter

from TwitterFollowBot import TwitterBot

my_bot = TwitterBot()
my_bot.send_tweet("Hello world!")

####Automatically add users tweeting about something to one of your list

from TwitterFollowBot import TwitterBot

my_bot = TwitterBot()
my_bot.auto_add_to_list("#TwitterBot", "twitterbot-list", count=10)

In the example above, the bot will try to add 10 users to the twitterbot-list that are tweeting #TwitterBot.

Remember that the max number of users in a list is 5000.

##Have questions? Need help with the bot?

If you're having issues with or have questions about the bot, please file an issue in this repository so one of the project managers can get back to you. Please check the existing (and closed) issues to make sure your issue hasn't already been addressed.