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Twitter Scraper Tool

The Twitter Scraper Tool is a custom tool that allows the Newsletter AI Agent to collect tweets related to a specified topic using the Apify Twitter Scraper Lite actor.

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Overview

The Twitter Scraper Tool is primarily used by the Researcher Agent to gather social media insights about the specified topic. It provides a flexible interface for searching Twitter and extracting structured data from tweets.

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Implementation

The Twitter Scraper Tool is implemented as a CrewAI BaseTool that interacts with the Apify Twitter Scraper Lite actor. Here’s the implementation: 
from crewai.tools import BaseTool
from pydantic import BaseModel, Field, ConfigDict
from typing import List, Optional
from apify import Actor
from src.tools.base import RunApifyActor

class TwitterScraperInput(BaseModel):
    """Input schema for TwitterScraper tool."""
    searchTerms: Optional[List[str]] = Field(
        description="Search terms to find tweets containing these terms. Alternative to using Twitter URLs.",
        default=None
    )

    sort: Optional[str] = Field(
        description="How to sort the returned tweets. Setting to 'Latest' yields more results.",
        default="Top",
        enum=["Top", "Latest"]
    )

    start: Optional[str] = Field(
        description="Scrape tweets starting from this date (format: YYYY-MM-DD)",
        default=None
    )

    end: Optional[str] = Field(
        description="Scrape tweets until this date (format: YYYY-MM-DD)", 
        default=None
    )

class TwitterScraperTool(BaseTool):
    name: str = "Twitter Scraper"
    description: str = "Tool for scraping Twitter content with configurable parameters"
    args_schema: type[BaseModel] = TwitterScraperInput
    actor: Actor = Field(description="Apify Actor instance")
    model_config = ConfigDict(arbitrary_types_allowed=True)

    def _run(
        self,
        searchTerms: Optional[List[str]] = None,
        sort: Optional[str] = "latest",
        start: Optional[str] = None,
        end: Optional[str] = None
    ) -> str:
        run_inputs = {}
        
        if searchTerms:
            run_inputs["searchTerms"] = searchTerms
        if sort:
            run_inputs["sort"] = sort
        run_inputs["maxItems"] = 5
        if start:
            run_inputs["start"] = start
        if end:
            run_inputs["end"] = end

        run_actor = RunApifyActor(self.actor)
        dataset = run_actor._run("apidojo/twitter-scraper-lite", run_inputs)
        return dataset

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Parameters

The Twitter Scraper Tool accepts the following parameters:
ParameterTypeDescriptionDefault
searchTermsList[str]Search terms to find tweets containing these termsNone
sortstrHow to sort the returned tweets (“Top” or “Latest”)“Top”
startstrScrape tweets starting from this date (YYYY-MM-DD)None
endstrScrape tweets until this date (YYYY-MM-DD)None

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Usage

The Twitter Scraper Tool is used by the Researcher Agent to gather social media insights about the specified topic: 
# Initialize the tool
twitter_tool = TwitterScraperTool(actor=actor)

# Use the tool
twitter_results = twitter_tool._run(
    searchTerms=[topic],
    sort="latest",
    start="2023-01-01",  # Optional: start date
    end="2023-12-31"     # Optional: end date
)

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Return Value

The tool returns a list of tweets, where each tweet is a dictionary containing information about the tweet, including:
  • text: The text content of the tweet
  • url: The URL of the tweet
  • username: The username of the tweet author
  • timestamp: The timestamp when the tweet was posted
  • likes: The number of likes the tweet received
  • retweets: The number of retweets the tweet received
  • Additional metadata about the tweet

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Apify Integration

The tool uses the Apify Twitter Scraper Lite actor, which provides several advantages:
  1. Scalability: The actor can handle large numbers of Twitter searches efficiently
  2. Reliability: The actor is designed to handle rate limiting and other issues that can arise when scraping Twitter
  3. Structured Data: The actor returns tweets in a structured format that is easy to process
  4. No API Key Required: Unlike the official Twitter API, the actor doesn’t require API keys for basic functionality

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Configuration

To use the Twitter Scraper Tool, you need to set up the following environment variables: 
APIFY_API_KEY=your_apify_api_key_here

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Next Steps