Python Tweepy – Getting the ID of a user

In this article we will see how we can get the ID of a user. ID is the unique identification marker of the twitter account. ID is given to the user by Twitter, the user can not select or change their own ID.

In order to get the ID we have to do the following :

1. Identify the user screen name of the profile.
2. Get the User object of the profile using the get_user() method and the user name.
3. From this object, fetch the id or id_str attribute present in it.

Example 1: Consider the following profile :

The screen name of the above mentioned profile is geeksforgeeks.

# 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 screen name of the user
screen_name = "geeksforgeeks"

# fetching the user
user = api.get_user(screen_name)

# fetching the ID
ID = user.id_str

print("The ID of the user is : " + ID)

Output :

The ID of the user is : 57741058

Example 2: Consider the following profile :

The screen name of the above mentioned profile is PracticeGfG.

# the screen name of the user
screen_name = "PracticeGfG"

# fetching the user
user = api.get_user(screen_name)

# fetching the ID
ID = user.id_str

print("The ID of the user is : " + ID)

Output :

The ID of the user is : 4802800777