Twitter Stream Analyser and Network Activator - watches twitter stream for keywords and hits a URL when it finds one.

tsana.py

#   Twitter stream analyser and network activator (TSANA)
#
#   This script analyses a twitter stream for keywords using the twitter
#   streaming api - off the back of it, it then hits a user defined url
#   In my case this is being used to tell an Arduino to pulse a light but
#   could be used for anything arbitrary.
#
#   Author: Andrew Fisher
#   Version: 0.3
#   Date: 20/10/2011
#
#   Usage:
#   Run from command line with python tsana.py [opts]
#   options are:
#       --twitter-username=[user]
#       --twitter-password=[password]
#       --keywords=[comma separated list of keywords]
#       --url=[complete URL to hit once a keyword has been found]
#
#   Changelog:
#       * v0.3 made password optional and uses getpass in order to not be in bash history
#       * v0.2 Cleanup post WDS and released as a gist

import argparse
import getpass
import sys
import urllib2

from tweetstream import FilterStream

parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description="Analyse a twitter stream and activate a URL once a keyword is found")

parser.add_argument('--twitter-username', '-u', dest="user", 
                    required=True, help="A valid twitter user name" )
parser.add_argument('--twitter-password', '-p', dest="pwd", 
                    required=False, help="Password for this twitter account can be left blank and you'll be asked for it" )
parser.add_argument('--keywords', '-k', dest="keywords", 
                    required=True, help="A keyword list, comma separated, in quotes" )
parser.add_argument('--url', '-n', dest="url", 
                    required=True, help="The url required to be hit when a match is made" )

args = parser.parse_args()

# put the keywords in a list and strip any leading spaces resulting from the comma splitting
words = [word.lstrip() for word in args.keywords.split(",")]

print "\n\nTSANA - Twitter Stream Analyser and Network Activator"
print "Searching for %s" % words
print "Will hit %s when one is found\n\n" % args.url

if args.pwd is None:
    #password hasn't been supplied
    args.pwd = getpass.getpass("Twitter password:")
    
stream = FilterStream(args.user, args.pwd, track=words)

for tweet in stream:
    print "+++++"
    print tweet["user"]["screen_name"]
    print tweet["text"]
    
    try:
        response = urllib2.urlopen(args.url).read()
    except Exception, e:
        print "Unexpected error:", sys.exc_info()[0]
        

To use from a command line run:

python tsana.py --twitter-username=[user] --twitter-password='user's pass' --keywords='[list, of, comma, separated keywords]' --url=[http://example.com/to/hit]

Use the getpass module to avoid passwords ending up in your bash history: http://docs.python.org/release/2.5.2/lib/module-getpass.html

Thanks for that - very good point. Hadn't worried about it in my case as I was using my twitter bot with a very insecure password not one of my "real" ones. Updated now to make it optional on the command line and use the getpass module to pick it up that way.