Regex errors utilizing Tweepy in python

Question

I am having a problem with the bit of code shown below. My original code worked when I was just puling the tweet information. Once I edited it to extract the URL within the text it started to give me problems. Nothing is printing and I am receiving these errors.

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\Users\Evan\PycharmProjects\DiscordBot1\main.py", line 22, in <module>
get_tweets(api, "cnn")
File "C:\Users\Evan\PycharmProjects\DiscordBot1\main.py", line 18, in get_tweets
url2 = re.findall('http[s]?://(?:[a-zA-Z]|[0-9]|[$-_@.&+]|[!*\(\),]|(?:%[0-9a-fA-F][0-9a-fA-F]))+', 
text)
File "C:\Users\Evan\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python39\lib\re.py", line 241, in findall
return _compile(pattern, flags).findall(string)
TypeError: cannot use a string pattern on a bytes-like object

I am receiving no errors before I run it, so I am extremely confused about why this is not working. It will probably be something simple as I am new to using both Tweepy and Regex.

import tweepy
import re

TWITTER_APP_SECRET = 'hidden'
TWITTER_APP_KEY = 'hidden'

auth = tweepy.OAuthHandler(TWITTER_APP_KEY, TWITTER_APP_SECRET)
api = tweepy.API(auth)


def get_tweets(api, username):
page = 1
while True:
    tweets = api.user_timeline(username, page=page)

    for tweet in tweets:
        text = tweet.text.encode("utf-8")
        url2 = re.findall('http[s]?://(?:[a-zA-Z]|[0-9]|[$-_@.&+]|[!*\(\),]|(?:%[0-9a-fA-F][0-9a-fA- 
F]))+', text)
        print(url2)


get_tweets(api, "cnn")

Errors again:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\Users\Evan\PycharmProjects\DiscordBot1\main.py", line 22, in <module>
get_tweets(api, "cnn")
File "C:\Users\Evan\PycharmProjects\DiscordBot1\main.py", line 18, in get_tweets
url2 = re.findall('http[s]?://(?:[a-zA-Z]|[0-9]|[$-_@.&+]|[!*\(\),]|(?:%[0-9a-fA-F][0-9a-fA-F]))+', 
text)
File "C:\Users\Evan\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python39\lib\re.py", line 241, in findall
return _compile(pattern, flags).findall(string)
TypeError: cannot use a string pattern on a bytes-like object

Process finished with exit code 1

Tell me if you need more information to help me, any help is appreciated, thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You're getting that error because you are using a string pattern (your regex) against a string which you've turned into a bytes object via encode().

Try running your pattern directly against tweet.text without encoding it.