Question

I have a project in python that I am trying to run from IDLE using Python 2.7 When I run the program a text file does get created like I want, but is not getting any information written to it and I do not understand why this is happening. I am running it as a module by pressing the F5 key in IDLE on my Ubuntu 12.04 LTS laptop.

Here is the code:

import time
import MySQLdb
import tweepy
from tweepy.streaming import StreamListener
from tweepy import OAuthHandler
from tweepy import Stream

# Go to http://dev.twitter.com and create an app.
# The consumer key and secret will be generated for you after
consumer_key=" # Omitted "
consumer_secret=" # Omitted "

# 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=" # Omitted "
access_token_secret=" # Omitted "

auth = tweepy.OAuthHandler(consumer_key, consumer_secret)
auth.set_access_token(access_token, access_token_secret)

api = tweepy.API(auth)

# If the authentication was successful, you should
# see the name of the account print out
print api.me().name

class StdOutListener(StreamListener):
        """ A listener handles tweets are the received from the stream.
        This is a basic listener that just prints received tweets to stdout.

        """
        def on_data(self, data):
            print data
            return True

        def on_error(self, status):
            print status

if __name__ == '__main__':
        l = StdOutListener()

        stream = Stream(auth, l)    
        stream.filter(track=['#google'])

My file on github if anyone wants to work on it with me on github:
stocktwitterdb.py

A streaming example using tweepy can be found here on github:
tweepy streaming.py

Now that I have things coming across the shell I want to put them to a database or a text file.

Answer 1

There’s been some confusion in the changes you need to make, so I’m going to post a hopefully-fixed version here, along with some comments about why things are the way they are.

import time
import MySQLdb # also not currently used
import tweepy
from textwrap import TextWrapper # not used currently
from getpass import getpass

# define the format for messages here to avoid repetition
OUT_STR = '''
Status : %(text)s
Author : %(author)s
Date/Time : %(date)s
Source : %(source)s
Geo : %(geo)s


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------


'''

class StockTweetListener(tweepy.StreamListener):
    def __init__(self, target):
        super(StockTweetListener, self).__init__();
        self.target = target
        # status_wrapper = TextWrapper(width=60, initial_indent=' ',
        #                             subsequent_indent=' ')
        # This isn't used in the current code. But, if you were going
        # to use it, you'd need to assign it to self.status_wrapper;
        # otherwise the variable would be local to this __init__ method
        # and inaccessible from anything else.

    def on_status(self, status):
        try:
            msg = OUT_STR % {
                'text': status.text,
                'author': status.author.screen_name,
                'date': status.created_at,
                'source': status.source,
                'geo': status.geo,
            }
            print msg
            self.target.write(msg)
            # use self.target here. self is one of the paramaters to this
            # method and refers to the object; because you assigned to its
            # .target attribute before, you can use it here.

        except UnicodeDecodeError:
            # Catch any unicode errors while printing to console
            # and just ignore them to avoid breaking application.
            print "Record Skipped"

    def on_error(self, status_code):
        print 'An error has occured! Status code = %s' % status_code
        return True # keep stream alive

    def on_timeout(self):
        print 'Snoozing Zzzzzz'

def main():
    username = raw_input('Twitter username: ')
    password = getpass('Twitter password: ')
    stock = raw_input('Name of Stocks(comma seperated): ')
    stock_list = [u for u in stock.split(',')]
    follow_list = None # ??? you don't seem to define this variable

    # open results.txt here and name it f locally. once code flow leaves
    # the with statement, in this case only through an exception happening
    # that jumps you out of the while loop, the file will be closed.
    with open('results.txt', 'w') as f:
         while True:
             stream = tweepy.Stream(
                            username, password,
                            StockTweetListener(f), # passes the file to __init__
                                                   # as the "target" argument
                            timeout=None)
             stream.filter(follow_list, stock_list)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    try:
        main()
    except KeyboardInterrupt:
        quit()