Frequently Asked Questions

General

Why am I encountering a 401 Unauthorized error with API or 403 Forbidden error with Client?

If you’re using a method that performs an action on behalf of the authenticating user, e.g. API.update_status(), make sure your app has the write permission.

After giving it the write permission, make sure to regenerate and use new credentials to utilize it.

See Twitter’s API documentation on app permissions for more information.

Why am I encountering a 403 Forbidden error with API?

If you have Essential access to the Twitter API, you won’t be able to access Twitter API v1.1. This includes all API methods.

You can use Twitter API v2 with Client or apply for Elevated access.

See the Twitter API access levels and versions documentation for more information.

Why am I encountering issues when attempting to upload GIFs or videos?

If you are encountering a 400 Bad Request error when uploading large GIFs or other errors/issues with uploading videos, make sure to pass the media_category parameter, e.g. as tweet_gif or tweet_video.

Also make sure your video follows the recommended specifications.

See Twitter’s API documentation on media best practices for more information.

Why am I getting an inconsistent number of / not getting 3200 Tweets for a specific user?

“For very high volume and high traffic accounts, be aware that the Twitter API is highly distributed and eventually consistent. We strive to provide current information but like any large scale system, you may see unexpected behaviours at high volumes.”

https://twittercommunity.com/t/inconsistent-tweet-retrieval/150635

Tweepy v4

Why am I getting a TypeError about an API method taking 1 positional argument but given 2?

This and other similar errors are due to Tweepy v4.0.0 changing API methods to no longer accept arbitrary positional arguments. The 1 positional argument being referred to in the error is self.

These parameters can be passed as keyword arguments instead.

Refer to the documentation for the API method being used.

Where did API.me go?

If you’re attempting to use API.me with Tweepy v4, you’ll get an AttributeError about the API object not having a me attribute.

This is because Tweepy v4.0.0 removed API.me.

Instead, you can use API.verify_credentials().

Twitter API v2

Why am I not getting expansions or fields data with API v2 using Client?

If you are simply printing the objects and looking at that output, the string representations of API v2 models/objects only include the default fields that are guaranteed to exist.

The objects themselves still include the relevant data, which you can access as attributes or by subscription.

There’s also a data attribute/key that provides the entire data dictionary.

How do I access includes data while using Paginator?

Paginator.flatten() flattens the data and iterates over each object.

To access includes, you’ll need to iterate through each response instead.

Why am I getting rate-limited so quickly when using Client.search_all_tweets() with Paginator?

The GET /2/tweets/search/all Twitter API endpoint that Client.search_all_tweets() uses has an additional 1 request per second rate limit that is not handled by Paginator.

You can time.sleep() 1 second while iterating through responses to handle this rate limit.