Take the 2-minute tour ×

I would like to use a one access token with OAuth to make calls to the Twitter API. I am NOT trying to build a web application but rather trying to harvest data from Twitter to perform some analysis. I would like to collect three types of data : followers, friends and user information including status updates. I am able to do all the same using no authentication as the data I collect are from public users only. However, due to API limits I would like to shift to Oauth which would allow me to get access to 350 requests per hour.

Is OAuth one access token the right approach for my task?

Is there any documentation or example to do the same? I am not using any wrapper. Wrappers like Python-Twitter and Twython don't allow functions to access followers, status updates of other users i.e. users with data publicly available. I use urllib2 to directly call the URL as given on the Twitter API documentation website.

I have registered an application and have all the keys (API key, Consumer Key, Consumer Secret, Access Token, Access Secret Key) with me. I would just like to get myself authenticated and mine Twitter to collect data.

Programming Language : Python

share|improve this question

2 Answers 2

up vote 1 down vote accepted

I used the Python-Oauth2 library to achieve a one access token.

share|improve this answer

You will get 350 requests per hour and access token. An access token basically represents the relationship between your application and a user.

So, as far as I know, for every user you are able to get to authorize your application - you will get 350 more requests.

share|improve this answer
Jon, I think I clearly mentioned that I am NOT trying to build an application. In any case, I was able to use the python-oauth2 library for performing one token access. –  Dexter Jun 8 '11 at 10:47

Your Answer


