Develop Reference

Collect accounts followed by an user efficiently

I am using this function to collect the usernames of the accounts followed by a user. The problem is that is very unefficient because it collects the whole user object. Is there a way to collect only the username or to do it more efficiently?
def collect_followed_by_user(api,target_user):
all_followed = []
ids = []
try:
for page in tweepy.Cursor(api.friends_ids, screen_name=target_user).pages():
ids.extend(page)
for identifier in ids:
name = api.get_user(identifier).screen_name
all_followed.append(name)
except:
exit(1)
return all_followed
The function uses the Twitter API with tweepy.

As I see, tweepy is based on Twitter API (without surprise!). As it is in code of tweepy get_user() used this reference to get user of Twitter API.
It is not possible to get only names or increase efficiency with tweepy. But you could try users/lookup directly with Twitter API or find the same method in another lib.

Get and parse data from the last message of a specific sender with python and Gmail API

Everyday, a sender "sender#sender.com" send me a message with a number inside.
I need to save this number everyday.
I want to write a python script with gmail API to get data from last mail from this sender, and then parse it.
I followed the Gmail API "Quickstart Guide" : here
I also check the page about User.message : here
However, I don't understand how to synchronize all of this to get the data.
Could someone explain me the process ?

If you where you able to complete the Gmail API quickstart, then you already have a GCP project, credentials and have authorized some Gmail API scopes for you app.
The above is the first step (being able to authenticate and be allowed to make requests for the API scope you need).
Since you need to pass a message's Id as a parameter for Users.messages.get you need to first retrieve it using listing messages for example.
So the next step is to make a request to Users.messages.list to list all messages from a user.
You could use the query (q) parameter to filter the messages by user like: q="from:someuser#example.com is:unread".
This will return a list of messages from someuser#example.com that are unread.
Try things out in the API explorer sidebar from the documentation until you have defined the request as you want, and then implement it into you app.

As aerials said.
users().messages().list(userId='me',q=("<parameters>"))).execute()
The above code will fulfill the exact same function as typing in a search request on the gmail website. You dont actually have to worry about labels or anything if you are operating at a small scale. Just follow the same syntax as the search bar on gmail.
However, I am not sure about the usage quotas on the q parameter for list. It may be more expensive for a bigger scale operation to use the q parameter instead of using the other api methods.

How to create a twitter bot that replies back as soon as another person tweets?

Yesterday I wrote a twitter bot with Python that takes the most recent tweet from Donald Trump, translates it over in Google Translate 45 times, and tweets back at him the final translation in English. Everything works, except the fact that I now need to add some sort of "listener" at the beginning of the code to automatically detect when he tweets so that the rest of the code can do its magic. I've been looking over the internet for some time now and I can't seem to find any sort of event handler that would allow the script to detect when he tweets. So that's why I've come to you guys. Is there any way to use Tweepy or other Python libraries to actively detect when someone tweets? I'll include my code so you guys can see what I want to happen exactly when he does Tweet. It's annotated so hopefully it's not too complicated to understand. Thanks!
import tweepy
from googletrans import Translator
#Keys for accessing the Twitter API
consumer_key = 'PLACEHOLDER'
consumer_secret = 'PLACEHOLDER'
access_token = 'PLACEHOLDER'
access_token_secret = 'PLACEHOLDER'
#Setting up authentification
auth = tweepy.OAuthHandler(consumer_key, consumer_secret)
auth.set_access_token(access_token, access_token_secret)
api = tweepy.API(auth)
#Scrapes my timeline for DT's latest tweet. I want this to be done AUTOMATICALLY when he tweets.
tweet = api.user_timeline(screen_name = 'realDonaldTrump', count = 1, include_rts = False, tweet_mode = 'extended')
#Translates the text from the .json file that is pulle from the previous line using the Google translate library.
for status in tweet:
translator = Translator()
translation = translator.translate(translation.text, 'mn')
translation = translator.translate(status._json["full_text"], 'ja')
#There are more translations in the actual code, but to reduce the length and complexity, I've taken those out. They don't matter to the specific question.
#Include his handle in a message so that the tweet is tweeted back at him once the translation is complete.
message = ('#realDonaldTrump', translation.text)
#Tweets the message back at him under that specific tweet using it's ID.
send = api.update_status(message, status._json["id"])
I just want the code to be able to scrape my timelines for one of DT's tweets in real time. Thanks!

To Automate your script, you might need to push it into a production server and then create a cron job that will run the script at given regular intervals. To run it locally, I use 1. NGROK - Exposes your localhost addresses and ports to the outside world ie it gives you a way to reach your localhost from the internet, and 2. Invictify - This allows you to run your scripts at a schedule. Also, the script as it is will need a web service to be triggered. Use Flask or FastAPI to create endpoints that call the script when triggered.

Is it possible to store authentication token in a separate file?

I am building a command line tool using python that interfaces with an RESTful api. The API uses oauth2 for authentication. Rather than asking for access_token every time user runs the python tool. Can I store the access_token in some way so that I can use it till its lifespan? If it is then how safe it is.

You can store the access token in a file on your user's desktop.
You can do so using a storage. Assuming you use oauth2client:
# Reading credentials
store = oauth2client.file.Storage(cred_path)
credentials = store.get()
# Writing credentials
creds = client.AccessTokenCredentials(access_token, user_agent)
creds.access_token = access_token
creds.refresh_token = refresh_token
creds.client_id = client_id
creds.client_secret = client_secret
# For some reason it does not save all the credentials,
# so write them to a json file manually instead
with open(credential_path, "w") as f:
f.write(creds.to_json)
In terms of security, I would not see much of a threat here as these access tokens will be on a user's desktop. If someone wants to get their access token, they would need to have read access to that file for that time frame. However, if they can already do that, they most likely also can use your script to send them a copy of the user's access token every time it is authenticated. But take my word lightly as I'm not a professional in that area. See information security stack exchange.
A post in information security stack exchange did talk about this:
these tokens give access to some fairly privileged information about your users.
However, the question was addressed to a database instead.
In conclusion, you can keep it in a file. (But take my word with a grain of salt)

Do you want to store it on the service side or locally?
Since your tool interfaces RESTful API, which is stateless, meaning that no information is stored between different requests to API, you actually need to provide access token every time your client accesses any of the REST endpoints. I am maybe missing some of the details in your design, but access tokens should be used only for authorization, since your user is already authenticated if he has a token. This is why tokens are valid only for a certain amount of time, usually 1 hour.
So you need to provide a state either by using cookie (web interface) or storing the token locally (Which is what you meant). However, you should trigger the entire oauth flow every time a user logs in to your client (authenticating user and providing a new auth token) otherwise you are not utilizing the benefits of oauth.

Tweepy mentions_timeline returns an empty list

I just started to make a Twitter Api. Normally I don't have a Twitter account, for this api I created one. I Tweeted 4 times, including some mentions. But when I use mentions_timeline like this;
my_mentions = api.mentions_timeline()
#print(my_mentions)
#output: []
After then I do a for loop on my_mentions with parameters text, screen_name but nothing returned.
What I'm doing wrong here? Why it's an empty list since I mentioned some people in the tweets + how can I search mentions for another user? Is there a parameter in mentions_timeline() object like screen_name or id ?

Try using the new Cursor Object as follows:
api = tweepy.API(auth)
for mentions in tweepy.Cursor(api.mentions_timeline).items():
# process mentions here
print mentions.text
as per Twitters documentation here
Returns the 20 most recent mentions (tweets containing a users’s
#screen_name) for the authenticating user.
so you cannot check other users mentions using this method. To achieve this, you will have to uses twitters search api. for tweepy's documentation check here

import tweepy
api = tweepy.API(auth)
api.mentions_timeline()

Try going to your profile using the same of which you're using the API and see whether the mentions exists in your profile.
and try mentioning the twitter account from different account which you trying from.
This might be the case where twitter had limited your activities and replies/tweets are not visible of that account.