X has officially launched version 2 of the Twitter API. And despite Elon Musk's threats to discontinue all free access to the API, there is a free tier available. It is quite limited, however. Free users can only access the endpoints to upload media, create tweets (up to 500 per month), and manage their own user data. They can't view tweets, like tweets, retweet tweets, or reply to tweets. They can't even view their own timeline. The free-tier endpoints also don't support application authentication, so you have to use Oauth2 user authentication, in which the user manually logs into their account and authorizes the app to use it.
(Note that it is still possible to create an automated bot. You will just have to manually authorize it when you first spin it up, and then the bot can keep itself logged in by generating refresh tokens for up to six months.)
Currently, the documentation for API connectivity via the free tier is extremely limited. In the absence of good docs, I've created this demo to illustrate how to connect to the v2 API via a Python FastAPI application with PKCE flow. It's a little complicated, especially if you want to tweet media, because the media upload endpoint still uses OAuth1, whereas the tweet endpoint uses OAuth2. So you have to use both authentication methods in the same app.
This demo repo uses the the uv package manager to manage dependencies. If you don't already have uv installed, you can install it with the following curl command:
curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | shTo verify install, use:
uv --versionConsult the uv installation docs for more detailed instructions and troubleshooting.
Once uv is installed on your system, clone this repo with:
git clone https://github.com/Promptly-Technologies-LLC/X_twitter_api_v2_demoThen:
- Navigate to the cloned directory with
cd X_twitter_api_v2_demo. - Install dependencies with
uv sync. - Copy the
example.envfile to.envwithcp example.env .env. - Edit the
.envfile and add your API key, API secret, client token, client secret, access token, and access secret (for instructions on how to get these, see below).
Before you can run the app, you need to configure your Twitter API credentials. To do this, you need to sign up for a Twitter/X developer account. Upon creating your account, you will receive an API key and an API secret. Save these in your .env file.
Next, create a new project and application from the developer dashboard. Then, from the application settings, do your user authentication setup. Give your application "Read and Write" permissions, classify it as a "Web App", and set the Callback URI to "http://127.0.0.1:5000/oauth/callback". Enter any URL you like for the required "Website" field; this won't affect our application. Upon saving these settings, you will be provided a client token and secret, which you should save to your .env file.
You will also need to generate an access token and secret from your application's "Keys and Tokens" section in the developer dashboard. Save these to your .env file.
To run the application, use:
uv run python main.pyThis will start a FastAPI server on port 5000. You can then navigate to http://127.0.0.1:5000 in a web browser to view the app.
The app consists of a simple form that allows you to input text and select an image to go with the text. Supply some text and then click "Post Tweet". You will be redirected to Twitter to authenticate with your account. Once you authenticate, you will be redirected back to the app, which will display a link to your posted tweet.
Once you've authenticated, your access and refresh tokens will be stored in sessions/tokens.json. Your refresh token will be used to generate new access tokens when your access token expires. It should be good for six months, after which you will need to authenticate again to generate a new refresh token. (No logout functionality is provided in this demo, but you can manually delete the sessions/tokens.json file to log out of your account.)