Simple Twitter archiving script in Python

twit537.py

#!/usr/bin/env python
import twitter
import simplejson

api = twitter.Api( consumer_key=''
                 , consumer_secret=''
                 , access_token_key=''
                 , access_token_secret=''
                  )


max_id = None
empty = False
fp = open('tweets.json', 'w')

while not empty:
    raw = api.GetUserTimeline( screen_name=''
                             , count=200
                             , max_id=max_id
                             , include_rts=True
                             , include_entities=True
                             , contributor_details=True
                             , return_raw=True
                              )
    parsed = simplejson.loads(raw)
    print "downloaded {} tweets with max_id {}".format(len(parsed), max_id)

    if parsed:
        fp.write(raw + '\n')
        max_id = parsed[-1]['id'] - 1
    else:
        empty = True