A Python script to fetch Twitter user's profile via their API. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't

requirements.txt

certifi==2024.2.2
charset-normalizer==3.3.2
idna==3.6
requests==2.31.0
urllib3==2.2.1

twitter_profile.py

import sys

import requests

session = requests.session()
user_agent = "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/120.0.0.0 Safari/537.36"


def get_bearer_token():
    headers = {"User-Agent": user_agent}
    resp = session.get(
        "https://abs.twimg.com/responsive-web/client-web/main.a2166cda.js",
        headers=headers,
    )
    pos = resp.text.index("Bearer ")
    i = pos
    while i < len(resp.text):
        if resp.text[i] == '"':
            break
        i += 1
    return resp.text[pos + 7 : i]


def get_guest_token(bearer_token):
    headers = {"User-Agent": user_agent, "Authorization": f"Bearer {bearer_token}"}
    resp = session.post(
        "https://api.twitter.com/1.1/guest/activate.json",
        headers=headers,
    )
    data = resp.json()
    return data.get("guest_token")


def get_x_user_profile(bearer_token, guest_token, user_id):
    headers = {
        "User-Agent": user_agent,
        "Authorization": f"Bearer {bearer_token}",
        "x-guest-token": guest_token,
    }
    resp = session.get(
        f"https://api.twitter.com/graphql/k5XapwcSikNsEsILW5FvgA/UserByScreenName?variables={{%22screen_name%22:%22{user_id}%22,%22withSafetyModeUserFields%22:true}}&features={{%22hidden_profile_likes_enabled%22:true,%22hidden_profile_subscriptions_enabled%22:true,%22responsive_web_graphql_exclude_directive_enabled%22:true,%22verified_phone_label_enabled%22:false,%22subscriptions_verification_info_is_identity_verified_enabled%22:true,%22subscriptions_verification_info_verified_since_enabled%22:true,%22highlights_tweets_tab_ui_enabled%22:true,%22responsive_web_twitter_article_notes_tab_enabled%22:true,%22creator_subscriptions_tweet_preview_api_enabled%22:true,%22responsive_web_graphql_skip_user_profile_image_extensions_enabled%22:false,%22responsive_web_graphql_timeline_navigation_enabled%22:true}}&fieldToggles={{%22withAuxiliaryUserLabels%22:false}}",
        headers=headers,
    )
    return resp.json()


if __name__ == "__main__":
    if len(sys.argv) < 2:
        print(
            "Please provide a twitter user id to continue. Sample usage: `python twitter_profile.py OldPanda`"
        )
        sys.exit(1)

    user_id = sys.argv[1]
    bearer_token = get_bearer_token()
    guest_token = get_guest_token(bearer_token)
    if guest_token is None:
        print("Failed to fetch guest token, please wait for a while then try again")
    else:
        print(get_x_user_profile(bearer_token, guest_token, user_id))