Posted on by Rune

Python Twitter Bot to Follow Followers – 3 Easy Steps

What will we cover in this tutorial?

  • To build a Bot to Follow Followers in Twitter using Python
  • Link to how you can get your access tokens and consumer keys to get access to the Twitter API (needed)
  • How to access the Twitter API
  • Finally, full code example of a Python Twitter Bot to follow the followers your account does not follow already.

Step 1: Setup up environment

In order to get a connection to twitter you need to have access tokens and consumer keys. If you don’t already have that, or you do not know what it is, then I recommend you follow this tutorial.

You also need the tweepy library. You can install it by typing the following command in the command line or see here for more details.

pip install tweepy

Then you are ready to connect to the Twitter API.

Step 2: Connecting to Twitter API

The first thing your code should do is to connect to the Twitter API and return the tweepy api to your program.

import tweepy

def get_twitter_api():
    # personal details
    consumer_key = "__USE YOUR KEY HERE__"
    consumer_secret = "__USE YOUR KEY HERE__"
    access_token = "__USE YOUR KEY HERE__"
    access_token_secret = "__USE YOUR KEY HERE__"

    # authentication of consumer key and secret
    auth = tweepy.OAuthHandler(consumer_key, consumer_secret)

    # authentication of access token and secret
    auth.set_access_token(access_token, access_token_secret)
    api = tweepy.API(auth, wait_on_rate_limit=True)
    return api

This code will authenticate and return the tweepy api.

Step 3: List followers and friends to follow back

Confused by the headline? Me, too. But here is where the magic happens.

The code simply explained.

  • Retrieves all the users that follow you (followers)
  • Retrieves those you follow (friends)
  • Loops through followers and check if you follow them.
    • If not, follow them back
def process():
    api = get_twitter_api()

    followers = api.followers_ids(api.me().id)
    print("Followers", len(followers))
    friends = api.friends_ids(api.me().id)
    print("You follow:", len(friends))

    for follower in followers:
        if follower not in friends:
            api.create_friendship(follower)

Full code example here

You can see the full code here.

import tweepy


def get_twitter_api():
    # personal details
    consumer_key = "__USE YOUR KEY HERE__"
    consumer_secret = "__USE YOUR KEY HERE__"
    access_token = "__USE YOUR KEY HERE__"
    access_token_secret = "__USE YOUR KEY HERE__"

    # authentication of consumer key and secret
    auth = tweepy.OAuthHandler(consumer_key, consumer_secret)

    # authentication of access token and secret
    auth.set_access_token(access_token, access_token_secret)
    api = tweepy.API(auth, wait_on_rate_limit=True)
    return api


def process():
    api = get_twitter_api()

    followers = api.followers_ids(api.me().id)
    print("Followers", len(followers))
    friends = api.friends_ids(api.me().id)
    print("You follow:", len(friends))

    for follower in followers:
        if follower not in friends:
            api.create_friendship(follower)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    process()

Next steps

  • Deploy it to an cron job so it runs every hour.
  • You can use PythonAnywhere (not sponsored by them)

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