I saw in some question on Stack Exchange that the limitation can be a function of the number of requests per 15 minutes and depends also on the complexity of the algorithm, except that this is not a complex one.
So I use this code:
import tweepy import sqlite3 import time db = sqlite3.connect('data/MyDB.db') # Get a cursor object cursor = db.cursor() cursor.execute('''CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS MyTable(id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, name TEXT, geo TEXT, image TEXT, source TEXT, timestamp TEXT, text TEXT, rt INTEGER)''') db.commit() consumer_key = "" consumer_secret = "" key = "" secret = "" auth = tweepy.OAuthHandler(consumer_key, consumer_secret) auth.set_access_token(key, secret) api = tweepy.API(auth) search = "#MyHashtag" for tweet in tweepy.Cursor(api.search, q=search, include_entities=True).items(): while True: try: cursor.execute('''INSERT INTO MyTable(name, geo, image, source, timestamp, text, rt) VALUES(?,?,?,?,?,?,?)''',(tweet.user.screen_name, str(tweet.geo), tweet.user.profile_image_url, tweet.source, tweet.created_at, tweet.text, tweet.retweet_count)) except tweepy.TweepError: time.sleep(60 * 15) continue break db.commit() db.close()
I always get the Twitter limitation error:
Traceback (most recent call last): File "stream.py", line 25, in include_entities=True).items(): File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/tweepy/cursor.py", line 153, in next self.current_page = self.page_iterator.next() File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/tweepy/cursor.py", line 98, in next data = self.method(max_id = max_id, *self.args, **self.kargs) File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/tweepy/binder.py", line 200, in _call return method.execute() File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/tweepy/binder.py", line 176, in execute raise TweepError(error_msg, resp) tweepy.error.TweepError: [{'message': 'Rate limit exceeded', 'code': 88}]
The problem is that your try: except: block is in the wrong place. Inserting data into the database will never raise a TweepError - it's iterating over Cursor.items() that will. I would suggest refactoring your code to call the next method of Cursor.items() in an infinite loop. That call should be placed in the try: except: block, as it can raise an error.
Here's (roughly) what the code should look like:
# above omitted for brevity c = tweepy.Cursor(api.search, q=search, include_entities=True).items() while True: try: tweet = c.next() # Insert into db except tweepy.TweepError: time.sleep(60 * 15) continue except StopIteration: break
This works because when Tweepy raises a TweepError, it hasn't updated any of the cursor data. The next time it makes the request, it will use the same parameters as the request which triggered the rate limit, effectively repeating it until it goes though.
For anyone who stumbles upon this on Google, tweepy 3.2+ has additional parameters for the tweepy.api class, in particular:
wait_on_rate_limitwait_on_rate_limit_notify
Setting these flags to True will delegate the waiting to the API instance, which is good enough for most simple use cases.
If you want to avoid errors and respect the rate limit you can use the following function which takes your api object as an argument. It retrieves the number of remaining requests of the same type as the last request and waits until the rate limit has been reset if desired.
def test_rate_limit(api, wait=True, buffer=.1): """ Tests whether the rate limit of the last request has been reached. :param api: The `tweepy` api instance. :param wait: A flag indicating whether to wait for the rate limit reset if the rate limit has been reached. :param buffer: A buffer time in seconds that is added on to the waiting time as an extra safety margin. :return: True if it is ok to proceed with the next request. False otherwise. """ #Get the number of remaining requests remaining = int(api.last_response.getheader('x-rate-limit-remaining')) #Check if we have reached the limit if remaining == 0: limit = int(api.last_response.getheader('x-rate-limit-limit')) reset = int(api.last_response.getheader('x-rate-limit-reset')) #Parse the UTC time reset = datetime.fromtimestamp(reset) #Let the user know we have reached the rate limit print "0 of {} requests remaining until {}.".format(limit, reset) if wait: #Determine the delay and sleep delay = (reset - datetime.now()).total_seconds() + buffer print "Sleeping for {}s...".format(delay) sleep(delay) #We have waited for the rate limit reset. OK to proceed. return True else: #We have reached the rate limit. The user needs to handle the rate limit manually. return False #We have not reached the rate limit return True
Just replace
api = tweepy.API(auth)
with
api = tweepy.API(auth, wait_on_rate_limit=True)
