Python Tweepy – Getting the date and time when a tweet was tweeted

In this article we will see how we can get the date and time when a status/tweet was posted/tweeted. The created_at attribute of the Status object provides us with a datetime object which tell us when the status was posted.

Identifying the date when a status was posted in the GUI :

In the above mentioned status, the status was posted on : Jun 11

In order to get the date and time when the status was posted, we have to do the following :

1. Identify the status ID of the status from the GUI.
2. Get the Status object of the status using the get_status() method with the status ID.
3. From this object, fetch the created_at attribute present in it.

Example 1 : Consider the following status :

We will use the status ID to fetch the status. The status ID of the above mentioned status is 1272771459249844224.

# import the module
import tweepy

# assign the values accordingly
consumer_key = ""
consumer_secret = ""
access_token = ""
access_token_secret = ""

# authorization of consumer key and consumer secret
auth = tweepy.OAuthHandler(consumer_key, consumer_secret)

# set access to user's access key and access secret
auth.set_access_token(access_token, access_token_secret)

# calling the api
api = tweepy.API(auth)

# the ID of the status
id = 1272771459249844224

# fetching the status
user = api.get_status(id)

# fetching the created_at attribute
created_at = status.created_at

print("The status was created at : " + str(created_at))

Output :

The status was created at : 2020-06-16 06:02:17

Example 2 : Consider the following status :

We will use the status ID to fetch the status. The status ID of the above mentioned status is 1272479136133627905.

# the ID of the status
id = 1272479136133627905

# fetching the status
user = api.get_status(id)

# fetching the created_at attribute
created_at = status.created_at

print("The status was created at : " + str(created_at))

Output :

The status was created at : 2020-06-15 10:40:42