Documentation Index
Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.x.com/llms.txt
Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
Introduction
The Search Posts endpoints
in the v2 world enable you to receive Posts related to topics of interest,
based on a search query that you produce. We have two different endpoints
available with v2 Search Posts: recent search, which is available to all
developers with an approved account and can search for Posts up to seven days
old, and full-archive search, which is only available to
researchers approved for the
Academic Research product track,
and can search through the entire archive of Posts dating back to March 2006.
You can see our full search offering on our
search overview page.
These Search Posts endpoints address one of the most common use cases for
academic researchers, who might use this for longitudinal studies, or analyzing
a past topic or event.
This tutorial provides a step-by-step guide for researchers who wish to use the
full-archive search endpoint to search the complete history of public X
data. It will also demonstrate the different ways to build a dataset, such as by
retrieving geo-tagged Posts, and how to page through the available Posts for a
query.
Prerequisites
Currently, this endpoint is only available as part of the
Academic Research product track.
In order to use this endpoint, you must
apply for access.
Learn more about the
application and requirements for this track.
Connect an app to the academic project
Once you are approved to use the Academic Research product track, you will see
your Academic Project in the
Developer Console. From the
“Apps” section, click on “Add App” to connect your
X App to the Project.
Then, you can either choose an existing App and connect it to your project (as
shown below).
Or you can create a new App, give it a name and click complete, to connect a new
App to your Academic Project.
This will give you your API keys and
Bearer Token that you can
then use to connect to the full-archive search endpoint.
Please note
The keys in the screenshot above are hidden, but in your own Developer Console,
you will be able to see the actual values for the API Key, API Secret Key, and
Bearer Token. Save these keys and the Bearer Token because you will need those
for calling the full-archive search endpoint.
Connecting to the full-archive search endpoint
The cURL command below shows how you can get historical Posts from @XDevelopers
handle. Replace the $BEARER_TOKEN with your own Bearer Token, paste the full
request in your terminal, and press “return”.
curl --request GET 'https://api.x.com/2/tweets/search/all?query=from:xdevelopers' --header 'Authorization: Bearer $BEARER_TOKEN'
curl --request GET 'https://api.x.com/2/tweets/search/all?query=from:xdevelopers&max_results=500' --header 'Authorization: Bearer $BEARER_TOKEN'
(covid OR coronavirus) and thus your API call will look like the following:
curl --request GET 'https://api.x.com/2/tweets/search/all?query=(covid%20OR%20coronavirus)&max_results=500' --header 'Authorization: Bearer $BEARER_TOKEN'
curl --request GET 'https://api.x.com/2/tweets/search/all?query=covid19%20-is:retweet&max_results=500' --header 'Authorization: Bearer $BEARER_TOKEN'
Using the start_time and end_time parameters to get historical Posts
When using the full-archive search endpoint, by default Posts from the last 30
days will be returned. If you want to get Posts that are older than 30 days,
you can use the start_time and end_time parameters in your API call. These
parameters must be in a valid RFC3339 date-time format, for example
2020-12-21T13:00:00.00Z. Thus, if you want to get all Posts from the XDevelopers
account for the month of December 2020, your API call will be:
curl --request GET 'https://api.x.com/2/tweets/search/all?query=from:XDevelopers&start_time=2020-12-01T00:00:00.00Z&end_time=2021-01-01T00:00:00.00Z' --header 'Authorization: Bearer $BEARER_TOKEN'
Using has:geo operator
If you want to get Posts that have geo data, you can use the has:geo operator.
For example, the following cURL request will get only those Posts from the
@XDevelopers handle that have geo data:
curl --request GET
'https://api.x.com/2/tweets/search/all?query=from:xdevelopers%20has:geo' --header
'Aubashthorization: Bearer $BEARER_TOKEN'
Using place_country operator
Similarly, you can limit Posts that have geo data, to a specific country, using
the place_country operator. The cURL command below will get all Posts from the
@XDevelopers handle from the United States:
curl --request GET
'https://api.x.com/2/tweets/search/all?query=from:xdevelopers%20place_country:US'
--hbasheader 'Authorization: Bearer XXXXX'
Getting more than 500 historical Posts using the next_token
As mentioned above, by default you can only get up to 500 Posts per request for
a query to the full-archive search endpoint. If there are more than 500 Posts
available for your query, your json response will include a next_token which you
can append to your API call in order to get the next available Posts for this
query. This next_token is available in the meta object of your JSON response,
which looks something:
{ "newest_id": "12345678...", "oldest_id": "12345678...", "result_count": 500,
"nebashxt_token": "XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX" }
curl --request GET
'https://api.x.com/2/tweets/search/all?max_results=500&query=covid&next_token=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX'
--header 'Authorization: Bearer $BEARER_TOKEN'
Additional resources
