Getting started with the recent search endpoint
This quick start guide will help you make your first request to the recent search endpoint with a set of specified fields using Postman.
If you would like to see sample code in different languages, please visit our X API v2 sample code GitHub repository.
Prerequisites
To complete this guide, you will need to have a set of keys and tokens to authenticate your request. You can generate these keys and tokens by following these steps:
- Sign up for a developer account and receive approval.
- Create a Project and an associated developer App in the developer portal.
- Navigate to your App's “Keys and tokens” page to generate the required credentials. Make sure to save all credentials in a secure location.
Steps to build a recent search request
Step one: Start with a tool or library
There are several different tools, code examples, and libraries that you can use to make a request to this endpoint, but we are going to use the Postman tool here to simplify the process.
To load X API v2 Postman collection into your environment, please click on the following button:
Once you have the X API v2 collection loaded in Postman, navigate to the Search Posts > Recent search request.
Step two: Authenticate your request
To properly make a request to the X API, you need to verify that you have permission. To do this with this endpoint, you must authenticate your request with either OAuth 2.0 App-Only, OAuth 2.0 Authorization Code with PKCE, or OAuth 1.0a User Context authentication methods.
For simplicity's sake, we will utilize OAuth 2.0 App-Only with this request, but you will need to use one of the other authentication methods if you'd like to request private metrics or Posts.
To utilize OAuth 2.0 App-Only, you must add your keys and tokens, specifically the App Access Token (also known as the App-only Bearer Token) to Postman. You can do this by selecting the environment named “X API v2” in the top-right corner of Postman and adding your keys and tokens to the "initial value" and "current value" fields (by clicking the eye icon next to the environment dropdown).
These variables will automatically be pulled into the request's authorization tab if you've done this correctly.
Step three: Create a search query
Each recent search query requires a single search query. For this example, we are going to use a query that matches on Posts posted by the @XDevelopers account. For this query we use the from operator and set it to XDevelopers (case insensitive):
from:XDevelopers
In Postman, navigate to the "Params" tab and enter this ID, or a string of Post IDs separated by a comma, into the "Value" column of the ids parameter.
| Key | Value | Description |
query |
from:XDevelopers | Search query to submit to the recent search endpoint |
Step four: Identify and specify which fields you would like to retrieve
If you click the "Send" button after step three, you will receive the default Post object fields in your response: id , text, and edit_history_tweet_ids. If you would like to receive additional fields beyond id , text, and edit_history_tweet_ids, you will have to specify those fields in your request with the field and/or expansion parameters.
For this exercise, we will request a four different sets of fields from different objects:
- The default Post object fields.
- The additional tweet.created_at field in the primary user objects.
- The associated authors’ user object’s default fields for the returned Posts.
- The additional user.description field in the associated user objects.
In Postman, navigate to the "Params" tab and add the following key:value pair to the "Query Params" table:
| Key | Value | Returned fields |
tweet.fields |
created_at |
tweets.created_at |
expansions |
author_id |
includes.users.id, includes.users.name, includes.users.username |
user.fields |
description |
includes.users.description |
You should now see the following URL next to the "Send" button:
https://api.x.com/2/tweets/search/recent?query=from:XDevelopers&tweet.fields=created_at&expansions=author_id&user.fields=created_at
Step five: Make your request and review your response
Once you have everything set up, hit the "Send" button and you will receive the following response:
{
"data": [
{
"author_id": "2244994945",
"created_at": "2020-06-11T16:05:06.000Z",
"id": "1271111223220809728",
"text": "Tune in tonight and watch as @jessicagarson takes us through running your favorite Python package in R. 🍿\n\nLearn how to use two powerful programming languages for data science together, and see a live example that uses the recent search endpoint from Twitter’s Developer Labs. https://t.co/v178oUZNuj"
},
{
"author_id": "2244994945",
"created_at": "2020-06-10T19:25:24.000Z",
"id": "1270799243071062016",
"text": "As we work towards building the new Twitter API, we’ve extended the deprecation timeline for several Labs v1 endpoints. Learn more 📖 https://t.co/rRWaJYJgKk"
},
{
"author_id": "2244994945",
"created_at": "2020-06-09T18:08:47.000Z",
"id": "1270417572001976322",
"text": "Annotations help you learn more about a Tweet — they can even help you find topics of interest. 🔬\n\nIn this tutorial, @suhemparack shows us how find Tweets related to COVID-19 using annotations + the filtered stream endpoint.\n\nLearn how you can, too. ⤵️\nhttps://t.co/qwVOgw0zSV"
}
],
"includes": {
"users": [
{
"description": "The voice of Twitter's #DevRel team, and your official source for updates, news, & events about Twitter's API. \n\n#BlackLivesMatter",
"id": "2244994945",
"name": "X Developers",
"username": "XDevelopers"
}
]
},
"meta": {
"newest_id": "1271111223220809728",
"oldest_id": "1270417572001976322",
"result_count": 3
}
}