A tweet flattening function
We are typically interested in hundreds or thousands of tweets. For this purpose, it makes sense to define a function to flatten JSON file full of tweets. Let's call this function flatten_tweets(). We will use this function multiple times in this course and change it slightly as we deal with different types of data.
json has been loaded for you.
This exercise is part of the course
Analyzing Social Media Data in Python
Exercise instructions
- Store the user screen name in
user-screen_name. - Store the extended tweet text in
extended_tweet-full_text. - Store the retweet user screen name in
retweeted_status-user-screen_name. - Store the retweet text in
retweeted_status-text.
Hands-on interactive exercise
Have a go at this exercise by completing this sample code.
def flatten_tweets(tweets_json):
""" Flattens out tweet dictionaries so relevant JSON
is in a top-level dictionary."""
tweets_list = []
# Iterate through each tweet
for tweet in tweets_json:
tweet_obj = json.loads(tweet)
# Store the user screen name in 'user-screen_name'
tweet_obj[____] = ____
# Check if this is a 140+ character tweet
if 'extended_tweet' in tweet_obj:
# Store the extended tweet text in 'extended_tweet-full_text'
tweet_obj[____] = ____
if 'retweeted_status' in tweet_obj:
# Store the retweet user screen name in 'retweeted_status-user-screen_name'
tweet_obj[____] = ____
# Store the retweet text in 'retweeted_status-text'
tweet_obj[____] = ____
tweets_list.append(tweet_obj)
return tweets_list