Twitter Python API Docs | dltHub

Twitter is a social media platform that provides a REST API for accessing tweets, user timelines, and related data. The REST API base URL is https://api.twitter.com/1.1 and All requests require OAuth 1.0a Bearer token authentication..

dlt is an open-source Python library that handles authentication, pagination, and schema evolution automatically. dlthub provides AI context files that enable code assistants to generate production-ready pipelines. Install with uv pip install "dlt[workspace]" and start loading Twitter data in under 10 minutes.

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What data can I load from Twitter?

Here are some of the endpoints you can load from Twitter:

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How do I authenticate with the Twitter API?

Requests must include an Authorization: Bearer <TOKEN> header. The token is obtained via the Twitter developer portal after creating an app.

1. Get your credentials

1. Sign in to https://developer.twitter.com.
2. Apply for a developer account if you don't have one.
3. Create a new Project & App.
4. In the App Settings, locate the 'API Key' and 'API Secret Key'.
5. Click 'Generate Bearer Token' to obtain the token used for OAuth authentication.

2. Add them to .dlt/secrets.toml

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[sources.twitter_ads_source]
api_key = "your_api_key_here"
api_secret_key = "your_api_secret_here"
bearer_token = "your_bearer_token_here"

dlt reads this automatically at runtime — never hardcode tokens in your pipeline script. For production environments, see setting up credentials with dlt for environment variable and vault-based options.

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How do I set up and run the pipeline?

Set up a virtual environment and install dlt:

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uv venv && source .venv/bin/activate
uv pip install "dlt[workspace]"

1. Install the dlt AI Workbench:

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dlt ai init --agent <your-agent> # <agent>: claude | cursor | codex

This installs project rules, a secrets management skill, appropriate ignore files, and configures the dlt MCP server for your agent. Learn more →

2. Install the rest-api-pipeline toolkit:

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dlt ai toolkit rest-api-pipeline install

This loads the skills and context about dlt the agent uses to build the pipeline iteratively, efficiently, and safely. The agent uses MCP tools to inspect credentials — it never needs to read your secrets.toml directly. Learn more →

3. Start LLM-assisted coding:

Use /find-source to load data from the Twitter API into DuckDB.

The rest-api-pipeline toolkit takes over from here — it reads relevant API documentation, presents you with options for which endpoints to load, and follows a structured workflow to scaffold, debug, and validate the pipeline step by step.

4. Run the pipeline:

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python twitter_ads_pipeline.py

If everything is configured correctly, you'll see output like this:

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Pipeline twitter_ads_pipeline load step completed in 0.26 seconds
1 load package(s) were loaded to destination duckdb and into dataset twitter_ads_data
The duckdb destination used duckdb:/twitter_ads.duckdb location to store data
Load package 1749667187.541553 is LOADED and contains no failed jobs

Inspect your pipeline and data:

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dlt pipeline twitter_ads_pipeline show

This opens the Pipeline Dashboard where you can verify pipeline state, load metrics, schema (tables, columns, types), and query the loaded data directly.

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Python pipeline example

This example loads user_timeline and home_timeline from the Twitter API into DuckDB. It mirrors the endpoint and data selector configuration from the table above:

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import dlt
from dlt.sources.rest_api import RESTAPIConfig, rest_api_resources

@dlt.source
def twitter_ads_source(bearer_token=dlt.secrets.value):
    config: RESTAPIConfig = {
        "client": {
            "base_url": "https://api.twitter.com/1.1",
            "auth": {
                "type": "bearer",
                "token": bearer_token,
            },
        },
        "resources": [
            {"name": "user_timeline", "endpoint": {"path": "statuses/user_timeline.json", "data_selector": "statuses"}},
            {"name": "home_timeline", "endpoint": {"path": "statuses/home_timeline.json", "data_selector": "statuses"}}
        ],
    }
    yield from rest_api_resources(config)


def get_data() -> None:
    pipeline = dlt.pipeline(
        pipeline_name="twitter_ads_pipeline",
        destination="duckdb",
        dataset_name="twitter_ads_data",
    )
    load_info = pipeline.run(twitter_ads_source())
    print(load_info)

To add more endpoints, append entries from the resource table to the "resources" list using the same name, path, and data_selector pattern.

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How do I query the loaded data?

Once the pipeline runs, dlt creates one table per resource. You can query with Python or SQL.

Python (pandas DataFrame):

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import dlt

data = dlt.pipeline("twitter_ads_pipeline").dataset()
sessions_df = data.user_timeline.df()
print(sessions_df.head())

SQL (DuckDB example):

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SELECT * FROM twitter_ads_data.user_timeline LIMIT 10;

In a marimo or Jupyter notebook:

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import dlt

data = dlt.pipeline("twitter_ads_pipeline").dataset()
data.user_timeline.df().head()

See how to explore your data in marimo Notebooks and how to query your data in Python with dataset.

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What destinations can I load Twitter data to?

dlt supports loading into any of these destinations — only the destination parameter changes:

Change the destination in dlt.pipeline(destination="snowflake") and add credentials in .dlt/secrets.toml. See the full destinations list.

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Troubleshooting

Authentication failures

• Error 401 Unauthorized – Occurs when the Bearer token is missing, malformed, or revoked. Verify that the Authorization: Bearer <TOKEN> header is correct and that the token has not expired.

Rate limits

• Error 429 Too Many Requests – Twitter imposes per‑endpoint request limits (e.g., 900 requests per 15‑minute window for timeline endpoints). Respect the x-rate-limit-reset header and implement back‑off logic.

Pagination quirks

• Use max_id to fetch older tweets and since_id for newer ones. Twitter returns a maximum of 200 tweets per request; to retrieve more, loop using the max_id of the last tweet in the previous response.

Ensure that the API key is valid to avoid 401 Unauthorized errors. Also, verify endpoint paths and parameters to avoid 404 Not Found errors.

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Next steps

Continue your data engineering journey with the other toolkits of the dltHub AI Workbench:

• data-exploration — Build custom notebooks, charts, and dashboards for deeper analysis with marimo notebooks.
• dlthub-runtime — Deploy, schedule, and monitor your pipeline in production.

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dlt ai toolkit data-exploration install
dlt ai toolkit dlthub-runtime install

• How to deploy a pipeline
• How to explore your data in marimo Notebooks
• How to query your data in Python with dataset
• Join the dlt community on Slack