convert a twitter tweet export (tweets or likes) to a csv

convert-tweet-archive.py

#!/usr/bin/env python3
# convert a twitter tweet export (e.g. tweets.js) or like export (e.g. likes.js) to a csv
# usage: python convert-tweet-archive.py filename.js
import sys
import json
import csv
import os
from datetime import datetime

with open(sys.argv[1], encoding='utf-8') as f:
    tweets = []

    # n.b. these need to match the attributes in the json
    key = "tweet"
    headers = ["id", "created_at", "full_text"]

    firstline = f.readline()
    lines = f.readlines()

    # likes exports are in a slightly different format
    if firstline.startswith("window.YTD.like"):
        key = "like"
        headers = ["tweetId", "fullText", "expandedUrl"]

    # re-add the first bracket so we still have valid json
    lines = "[" + "".join(lines)
    j = json.loads(lines)
    for item in j:
        tweet = item.get(key)
        parsed_tweet = []
        for header in headers:
            attribute = tweet[header]
            if header == "created_at":
                # convert timestamps from this weird format: e.g. Fri Oct 28 14:58:42 +0000 2022
                attribute = datetime.strptime(attribute, "%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %z %Y")
            parsed_tweet.append(attribute)
        tweets.append(parsed_tweet)

print("writing %d tweets to csv..." % len(tweets))

with open(os.path.splitext(sys.argv[1])[0] + ".csv", 'w') as outfile:
    csvwriter = csv.writer(outfile)
    csvwriter.writerow(headers)
    csvwriter.writerows(tweets)