Get the number of followers and following on Twitter

example_usage.txt

alvaro@ideas:~$ ipython --no-banner -i followers_following.py 

In [1]: number_of_following('turicas')
Out[1]: 627

In [2]: number_of_followers('turicas')
Out[2]: 1253

followers_following.py

import urllib
import json

URL_API = 'https://api.twitter.com/1/'

def number_of_following(username):
    url = URL_API + 'friends/ids.json?cursor=-1&screen_name=' + username
    following = urllib.urlopen(url)
    contents = following.read()
    list_of_following = json.loads(contents)['ids']
    return len(list_of_following)

def number_of_followers(username):
    url = URL_API + 'followers/ids.json?cursor=-1&screen_name=' + username
    following = urllib.urlopen(url)
    contents = following.read()
    list_of_following = json.loads(contents)['ids']
    return len(list_of_following)