rehydratoR

This R package facilitates replication of Twitter-based research by providing a convenient function to download lists of tweets.

The input for the package is a list of tweet ID numbers. See https://archive.org/details/gaza-tweets for an example.

The output of the package are the tweets downloaded as a tibble or as JSON files. Examples for both are below.

This package limits the rate of tweet downloading so Twitter’s 90,000 tweet/15 minute limit is not exceeded. If you choose to download the tweets to JSON files, then a new JSON file will be created for every 90,000 tweet ID numbers.

Tweets that have been deleted or made private cannot be downloaded.

Getting Started

Users must acquire a consumer key, consumer secret, access token, and access token secret from https://developer.twitter.com on their own.

Examples

Tibble Download Example

JSON File Download Example

Contributing

kevincoakley, with zacharyst sending annoying e-mails.

Version History

0.5.2

• Added a parameter called group_start that takes the list of split tweet IDs and keeps only those from group_start to the final list. That way, if a download is interrupted, which is likely for large corpuses, the user can restart the download at the group_start chunk, not from the beginning.

• Added a line to print an estimate of how long a download will take

0.5.1

• Prepping for CRAN release

0.5.0

• Renamed Project to rehydratoR

0.4.0

• Save tweets to JSON files

0.3.0

• Changed rate limiting from waiting 915 seconds after every loop to timing the length of every loop and ensuring every loop is at least 915 seconds

0.2.0

• Rate limiting
• Added example file

0.1.0

• Initial Release

Authors

• Kevin Coakley - programming, testing
• Zachary Steinert-Threlkeld - requirements, testing, promoting

License

This project is licensed under the BSD License - see the LICENSE.md file for details

Acknowledgments

• Thank you to the support Christine Kirkpatrick and the San Diego Supercomputer Center at UCSD.