Keeps your followers and friends in sync

twitter_sync.py

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
"""
This script will follow all those who follow you and unfollow those who
unfollow you. Basically it keeps your followers and friends in sync.

You will need to get a consumer key and consumer secret token to use this
script, you can do so by registering a twitter application at http://twitter.com/apps

@requirements: Python 2.5+, Tweepy (https://github.com/joshthecoder/tweepy)
@author: Dave Jeffery
"""
import tweepy

CONSUMER_KEY = 'xxx'
CONSUMER_SECRET = 'xxx'

def oauth_login(consumer_key, consumer_secret):
    """Authenticate with twitter using OAuth"""

    auth = tweepy.OAuthHandler(consumer_key, consumer_secret)
    auth_url = auth.get_authorization_url()
    
    verify_code = raw_input("Authenticate at %s and then enter you verification code here > " % auth_url) 
    auth.get_access_token(verify_code)
    
    return tweepy.API(auth)

def get_diff(list1,list2):
    """Outputs objects which are in list1 but not list 2"""
    return list(set(list1).difference(set(list2)))
    
def follow_users(api, follow_list):
    """Follows users in follow_list (list of twitter ids)"""
    for user in follow_list:
        try:
            api.create_friendship(user)
        except:
            print "error on user: %s" % api.get_user(user).screen_name
    print "Done\n\n"
    
def unfollow_users(api, unfollow_list):
    """Unfollows users in unfollow_list (list of twitter ids)"""
    for user in unfollow_list:
        try:
            api.destroy_friendship(user)
        except:
            print "error on user: %s" % api.get_user(user).screen_name
    print "Done"

def friend_sync(api):
    """Do the syncing, cha cha cha!"""
    friend_ids = []
    follower_ids = []
    
    print "Fetching Followers..."
    for follower in tweepy.Cursor(api.followers).items():
        follower_ids.append(follower.id)
        
    print "Fetching Friends..."
    for friend in tweepy.Cursor(api.friends).items():
        friend_ids.append(friend.id)
    
    follow_list = get_diff(follower_ids, friend_ids)
    unfollow_list = get_diff(friend_ids, follower_ids)
    
    # Follow people
    print "You are about to FOLLOW %s people." % len(follow_list)
    print "Does this sound ok? There is no undo! Type yes to carry out this action."   
    do_follow = raw_input("> ")  
    if do_follow.lower() == 'yes':
        print "If errors appear below it may mean that the user has a private profile, if so a follow request will be sent."
        follow_users(api, follow_list)

    # Un-follow people
    print "You are about to UN-FOLLOW %s people." % len(unfollow_list)
    print "Does this sound ok? There is no undo! Type yes to carry out this action."
    do_unfollow = raw_input("> ")    
    if do_unfollow.lower() == 'yes':
        unfollow_users(api, unfollow_list)


if __name__ == "__main__":    
    api = oauth_login(CONSUMER_KEY, CONSUMER_SECRET)
    print "Authenticated as: %s" % api.me().screen_name
    
    friend_sync(api)