Shortening URL in the t.co way

Question

I have to retrieve tweets containing links to some YouTube videos. However, Twitter uses t.co URL-shortener service to short urls, so that if a user tweets the following link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6QZn9xiuOE, the tweet reads something like https://t.co/bYeHhy9kAU

Thus, I can't use the original url, but I have to run a query using the shortened url.

How can I obtain the t.co shortened url starting from the original URL?

What does the request to t.co/HdshdsHe return? What headers are set by the server? — user1907906
this is the shortened URL for the youtube video above: t.co/bYeHhy9kAU — stochazesthai
Mh, it seems that the only solution will be tweet the original URL, take its shortened version, and then run the query. :\ — stochazesthai

stochazesthai stochazesthai · Accepted Answer · 2015-05-08T17:35:10

I solved my problem by tweeting the original URL on my timeline, then reading its shortened version, and finally running a query using the shortened URL.

Here is the Python code I used:

twitter_api = twitter.Twitter(auth = auth)

# searching for tweets
video_list = ["HdwMY2Fa7G4","FuqLui0_EF8","ZLUSg1_-o4c",
"jvN5OwkwwmE","D2H839E2PIw","94wmdh23JsQ",
"MIXuXnnW4io","9Jo0uk9ewWQ","9eBHdFpmpHs",
"czr4nUEF77s","Q-P9ygH6T20","SWnXj8Nkpic",
"5IgvJ7mEl4c","grZPvHb0yA8","Gwk6FmiAKCo",
"vCub9qk4vTk","PX0qDfYNykc","HLz_4NVSO6c",
"rTB5kwmv9D4","gXwZ3dbIhjw"]

k = 0 # counter
for vid in video_list:
  k += 1
  # settings
  count = 10
  video_url = 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v='+vid

  # tweet video URL in my timeline
  twitter_api.statuses.update(status = video_url)

  # retrieve shortened URL from my last tweet
  my_account = 'ibbessi'
  args = {'count' : 1}
  timeline = twitter_api.statuses.user_timeline(screen_name = my_account, **args)
  shortened_url = timeline[0]['text']
  print '# ', str(k), '\noriginal URL:', video_url, '\nshortened URL:', shortened_url, '\n'

  # search the shortened URL
  search_results = twitter_api.search.tweets(q = shortened_url, count = count)
  statuses = search_results['statuses']

  # output shortened URL
  print 'I have found ' + str(len(statuses)) + ' tweet(s) with video ' + shortened_url + '\n'
  for i in range(0,len(statuses)):
      print '#', str(i+1), '\nTEXT: ' , statuses[i]['text'], '\nUSER: ', statuses[i]['user']['name'], '\nRT COUNT: ', statuses[i]['retweet_count'], '\nDATE: ', statuses[i]['created_at'],'\n'

Shortening URL in the t.co way

1 Answers