"IncompleteRead" Error when retrieving Twitter Data using Python

Question

While running this program to retrieve Twitter data using Python 2.7.8 :

#imports
from tweepy import Stream
from tweepy import OAuthHandler
from tweepy.streaming import StreamListener

#setting up the keys
consumer_key = '…………...'
consumer_secret = '………...'
access_token = '…………...'
access_secret = '……………..'

class TweetListener(StreamListener):
# A listener handles tweets are the received from the stream.
#This is a basic listener that just prints received tweets to standard output

def on_data(self, data):
    print (data)
    return True

def on_error(self, status):
    print (status)

#printing all the tweets to the standard output
auth = OAuthHandler(consumer_key, consumer_secret)
auth.set_access_token(access_token, access_secret)



stream = Stream(auth, TweetListener())

t = u"سوريا"
stream.filter(track=[t])

after running this program for 5 hours i got this Error message:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/Mona/Desktop/twitter.py", line 32, in <module>
    stream.filter(track=[t])
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages/tweepy/streaming.py", line 316, in filter
    self._start(async)
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages/tweepy/streaming.py", line 237, in _start
    self._run()
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages/tweepy/streaming.py", line 173, in _run
    self._read_loop(resp)
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages/tweepy/streaming.py", line 225, in _read_loop
    next_status_obj = resp.read( int(delimited_string) )
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/httplib.py", line 543, in read
    return self._read_chunked(amt)
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/httplib.py", line 612, in _read_chunked
    value.append(self._safe_read(chunk_left))
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/httplib.py", line 660, in _safe_read
    raise IncompleteRead(''.join(s), amt)
IncompleteRead: IncompleteRead(0 bytes read, 976 more expected)
>>> 

Actually i don't know what to do with this problem !!!

Answer 1

You should check to see if you're failing to process tweets quickly enough using the stall_warnings parameter.

stream.filter(track=[t], stall_warnings=True)

These messages are handled by Tweepy (check out implementation here) and will inform you if you're falling behind. Falling behind means that you're unable to process tweets as quickly as the Twitter API is sending them to you. From the Twitter docs:

Setting this parameter to the string true will cause periodic messages to be delivered if the client is in danger of being disconnected. These messages are only sent when the client is falling behind, and will occur at a maximum rate of about once every 5 minutes.

In theory, you should receive a disconnect message from the API in this situation. However, that is not always the case:

The streaming API will attempt to deliver a message indicating why a stream was closed. Note that if the disconnect was due to network issues or a client reading too slowly, it is possible that this message will not be received.

The IncompleteRead could also be due to a temporary network issue and may never happen again. If it happens reproducibly after about 5 hours though, falling behind is a pretty good bet.