Follow a user or list of users tweets and write them to CSV

streaming_twitter_user.py

# Finding topics of interest by using the filtering capablities it offers.
import twitter, json, sys, csv

# == OAuth Authentication ==
# The consumer keys can be found on your application's Details
# page located at https://dev.twitter.com/apps (under "OAuth settings")
consumer_key=""
consumer_secret=""

# After the step above, you will be redirected to your app's page.
# Create an access token under the the "Your access token" section
access_token=""
access_token_secret=""


auth = twitter.oauth.OAuth(access_token, access_token_secret,consumer_key, consumer_secret)
twitter_api = twitter.Twitter(auth=auth)

csvfile = open('tweetdata.csv', 'a')
csvwriter = csv.writer(csvfile)

# what does following a user mean - https://dev.twitter.com/streaming/overview/request-parameters#follow
u = 918797696
print >> sys.stderr, 'Filtering the public timeline for a user="%s"' % (u,)
# Reference the self.auth parameter
twitter_stream = twitter.TwitterStream(auth=twitter_api.auth)
# See https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis
stream = twitter_stream.statuses.filter(follow=u)
# For illustrative purposes, when all else fails, search for Justin Bieber
# and something is sure to turn up (at least, on Twitter)
for tweet in stream:
	
	print tweet['text']
	user = tweet['user']['screen_name']
	# print json.dumps(tweet, indent=1)
	csvwriter.writerow([tweet['created_at'],user.encode('utf-8'),tweet['text'].encode('utf-8')])
	# sys.exit()

	# Save to a database in a particular collection