How to make a Twitter Bot in Python?

Twitter is an American microblogging and social networking service on which users post and interact with messages known as “tweets“. In this article we will make a Twitter Bot using Python.

Python as well as Javascript can be used to develop an automatic Twitter bot that can do many tasks by its own such as:

• Retweets the tweets with particular #hastags.
• Favourites/Likes the tweets with particular #hashtags.
• Follows the users who tweets with particular #hashtags.
• Can also DM the users if granted with the permission.

Requirements

Install Tweepy 

For all this we will need a Python library called Tweepy for accessing the Twitter API. We can install tweepy in three ways:

1. Using pip command

$ pip install tweepy

2. Clone the GitHub repository of tweepy

$ git clone https://github.com/tweepy/tweepy.git
$ cd tweepy
$ pip install

3. Cloning the repository directly

$ pip install git+https://github.com/tweepy/tweepy.git

Sign up for Twitter Developer Account

• Sign up for a separate account for your Twitter Bot and then apply for Twitter Developer Account following this link https://developer.twitter.com/en/apply-for-access 
• Enter the necessary details and await for your mail confirmation. Once confirmed, click on Create an App option.
• Enter the necessary details to generate the secret key and access tokens.
• Copy the keys and keep them safe.

Developing the Twitter Bot

Make a file twitterbot_retweet.py and paste the following code.

Python3

import tweepy
from time import sleep
from credentials import *
from config import QUERY, FOLLOW, LIKE, SLEEP_TIME

auth = tweepy.OAuthHandler(consumer_key, consumer_secret)
auth.set_access_token(access_token, access_token_secret)
api = tweepy.API(auth)

print("Twitter bot which retweets, like tweets and follow users")
print("Bot Settings")
print("Like Tweets :", LIKE)
print("Follow users :", FOLLOW)

for tweet in tweepy.Cursor(api.search, q = QUERY).items():
    try:
        print('\nTweet by: @' + tweet.user.screen_name)

        tweet.retweet()
        print('Retweeted the tweet')

        # Favorite the tweet
        if LIKE:
            tweet.favorite()
            print('Favorited the tweet')

        # Follow the user who tweeted
        # check that bot is not already following the user
        if FOLLOW:
            if not tweet.user.following:
                tweet.user.follow()
                print('Followed the user')

        sleep(SLEEP_TIME)

    except tweepy.TweepError as e:
        print(e.reason)

    except StopIteration:
        break

Now make another file to specify what should your bot do. Name it config.py

Edit the #hashtag according to your choice and the like or follow option to either True or False.

Python3

# Edit this config.py file as you like

# This is hastag which Twitter bot will
# search and retweet You can edit this with
# any hastag .For example : '# javascript'

QUERY = '# anything'

# Twitter bot setting for liking Tweets
LIKE = True

# Twitter bot setting for following user who tweeted
FOLLOW = True

# Twitter bot sleep time settings in seconds.
# For example SLEEP_TIME = 300 means 5 minutes.
# Please, use large delay if you are running bot
# all the time so that your account does not
# get banned.

SLEEP_TIME = 300

Next make a file credentials.py and paste your access tokens carefully in between the single quotes ‘ ‘.

Python3

# This is just a sample file. You need to
# edit this file. You need to get these
# details from your Twitter app settings.

consumer_key = ''
consumer_secret = ''
access_token = ''
access_token_secret = ''

Deployment

Run the twitterbot_retweet.py file from your Command Prompt/Terminal with this command.

$ python twitterbot_retweet.py

And it works!!