Tweet Archive Logger

Python script which turns a Tweet Archive into a single, nicely-formatted Markdown file. Allows some (basic) custom formatting options.

The script reads tweets in chronological order, and the output file will contain the oldest tweet at the top.¹

Usage

1. Download your tweet archive

This can be done by going to the Settings page on the Twitter website, and clicking Request your archive. You'll get an email containing a download link for your archive. You'll need to unzip it once it's downloaded.

2. Change the script settings

At the top of tweet_archive_logger.py, there are five options you need to change for the script to work for you:

• username is your Twitter username, without the @ symbol.
• csv_path is the file path of the CSV file inside the tweet archive folder.
• output_path is the file path to the file you want to save the Markdown output into.
• tweet_format is the format each tweet should be in; see below for more info.
• date_format is the format timestamps should be changed into; see below for more info.

tweet_format

This is simply a string which gets replicated for each tweet in your archive. There are a few placeholders you can use which get replaced with data from the tweet:

• id is the long id number that Twitter gives each tweet.
• date is the date of the tweet, formatted according to date_format.
• text is the actual text of the tweet.
• url is the URL which points to the tweet on the Twitter website. When you use a placeholder inside tweet_format, it must be surrounded with double curly braces.

Here is an example of tweet_format:

{{text}}

[{{date}}]({{url}})

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The above formats a tweet like this:

Using tables for layout like it's 1996.

[March 31, 2014 at 09:36PM](http://twitter.com/jobbogamer/status/450748504517115905)

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date_format

This is simply a string which gets replicated when you use the {{date}} placeholder. The date string itself is made up of a number of placeholders:

• year is the four digit year, e.g. 2014.
• month_num is the month number with a leading zero, 01 through 12.
• month is the month name, January through December.
• month_short is the first three letters of the month name, Jan through Dec.
• day is the day of the month with a leading zero, 01 through 31.
• hour is the hour in 24-hour format with a leading zero, 00 through 23.
• hour_12 is the hour in 12-hour format with a leading zero, 01 through 12.
• minute is the minute with a leading zero, 00 through 59.
• second is the second with a leading zero, 00 through 59.
• am is the AM/PM qualifier, either AM or PM. When you use a placeholder inside date_format, it must be surrounded with double curly braces.

Here is an example of date_format:

{{day}} {{month}}, {{year}} at {{hour}}:{{minute}}{{am}}

The above formats a date like this:

March 31, 2014 at 09:36PM

3. Run the script

Now just run the script like you would any other Python script, either through your IDE or from the command line.

Contributing

Feel free to fork, change things, and issue a pull request. This isn't a very robust script, and there aren't many formatting options at the moment.

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1: This is done because I used this script to start a tweet log that gets appended to by ifttt. Since ifttt can only append to files at the bottom, the tweets had to be oldest first.