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# Initiate the connection to Twitter
twitter = Twitter(auth=oauth)

# Search for latest tweets about "pakistan"
results = twitter.search.tweets(q='pakistan',until=2008 - 08 - 19, )

print results

I am trying to retrieve tweets that are earlier than this date by one week. It does not return anything. However, I have searched manually on twitter and found that tweets exist.

ndrwnaguib
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2 Answers2

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When you use the Twitter API to download tweets you will have access to tweets back to roughly one week old. This is despite the fact that you can see tweets older than one week on Twitter's website. This is a built-in limitation of the API.

Jonas
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  • Maybe I weren't accurate. I do not want tweets older than one week. I do not even receive tweets that are just older by one week exactly. – ndrwnaguib Nov 29 '17 at 04:18
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    Let me try to understand your question better. Your example implies you are looking for tweets created before August 19, 2008. Is that not true? – Jonas Nov 29 '17 at 12:41
  • Yes exactly. They do not show though, even tweets 1 day earlier. – ndrwnaguib Nov 29 '17 at 16:06
  • So, you are looking for tweets that are 9 years old. You cannot do that with the Twitter API. As I mentioned in my answer, you can only get tweets going back about 1 week (from the present). – Jonas Nov 29 '17 at 16:51
  • Yeah, just realized that it is 1 week back from the present and not from the requested date. Thank you. – ndrwnaguib Nov 29 '17 at 17:10
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To have access to a bigger time span you can do the following ways:

  • download everyday data and add up gradually.
  • you can search on the web to find a dataset
  • The best way is to ask Twitter to give you the data for a specific time span while you have an API developer account. You have asked for a quote using this address: https://www.trackmyhashtag.com/twitter-dataset#request-data-form
Allin
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