Simple Python Twitter rss feed parser

October 3, 2009 - by teebes -

If you want to display your tweets somewhere on your own web page, the easiest way is to use the RSS feed in your Twitter profile page (for example http://twitter.com/teebesz). Of course if you want to parse the @, # and links, you need just a little bit of code.

Here is the Python script I use for this site's Twitter display. You'll need the feedparser library installed (how have you been living without it anyway!)

import datetime
import feedparser
import re
    
def get_twitter(url, limit=3):
    """Takes a twitter rss feed and returns a list of dictionaries, one per
    tweet. Each dictionary contains two attributes:
        - An html ready string with the @, # and links parsed to the correct
        html code
        - A datetime object of the posted date"""

    twitter_entries = []
    for entry in feedparser.parse(url)['entries'][:limit]:

        # convert the given time format to datetime
        posted_datetime = datetime.datetime(
            entry['updated_parsed'][0],
            entry['updated_parsed'][1],
            entry['updated_parsed'][2],
            entry['updated_parsed'][3],
            entry['updated_parsed'][4],
            entry['updated_parsed'][5],
            entry['updated_parsed'][6],
        )
        
        # format the date a bit
        if posted_datetime.year == datetime.datetime.now().year:
            posted = posted_datetime.strftime("%b %d")
        else:
            posted = posted_datetime.strftime("%b %d %y")
        
        # strip the "<username>: " that preceeds all twitter feed entries
        text = re.sub(r'^\w+:\s', '', entry['title'])
        
# parse links
        text = re.sub(
            r"(http(s)?://[\w./?=%&\-]+)",
            lambda x: "<a href='%s'>%s</a>" % (x.group(), x.group()),
            text)
        
        # parse @tweeter
        text = re.sub(
            r'@(\w+)',
            lambda x: "<a href='http://twitter.com/%s'>%s</a>"\
                 % (x.group()[1:], x.group()),
            text)
        
        # parse #hashtag
        text = re.sub(
            r'#(\w+)',
            lambda x: "<a href='http://twitter.com/search?q=%%23%s'>%s</a>"\
                 % (x.group()[1:], x.group()),
            text)
        
        twitter_entries.append({
            'text': text,
            'posted': posted,
            })
        
    return twitter_entries