Python Tweepy – Getting the time when a user was created

In this article we will see how we can get the time and date when a user created their Twitter account. The created_at attribute provides us with a datetime object denoting the exact time when the user account was created.

Identifying the date when a user was created in the GUI :

In the above mentioned profile the user was created on July 2009.

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

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

Example 1: Consider the following profile :

We will use the user ID to fetch the user. The user ID of the above mentioned profile is 57741058.

# 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 user
id = 57741058

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

# fetching the create_at attribute
created_at = user.created_at

print("The user was created on : " + str(created_at))

Output :

The user was created on : 2009-07-17 20:02:09

Example 2: Consider the following profile :

We will use the screen name to fetch the user. 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 create_at attribute
created_at = user.created_at

print("The user was created on : " + str(created_at))

Output :

The user was created on : 2016-01-23 12:03:47