tweepy is not giving me the last tweet

Im trying to get the last tweet froom a twitter account using tweepy in python.

I know there are a few similiar answers for example this one Get the last tweet with tweepy

However the issue that I have is that i dont get the last tweet from a persons timeline but the second last tweet.

Im using this code here in a while loop:

tweetL = api.user_timeline(screen_name='elonmusk', tweet_mode="extended", exclude_replies, count=1)
    print(tweetL[0].full_text)

If i run this(at time of the writing), i get this tweet from elon:

What a beautiful day in LA

however looking at his timeline the last tweet from him was this:

Warm, sunny day & snowy mountains

So why am i not getting the last tweet? Strangely enough running this script last night it did print out his last tweet. running it now I get the same tweet, it printed out yesterday as the last tweet

and if I run the above code like this (without ‘exclude_replies’)

tweetL = api.user_timeline(screen_name='elonmusk', tweet_mode="extended")
    print(tweetL[0].full_text)

i get as his last tweet

@ErcXspace @smvllstvrs T/W will be ~1.5, so it will accelerate unusually fast. High T/W is important for reusable vehicles to make more efficient use of propellant, the primary cost. For expendable rockets, throwing away stages is the primary cost, so optimization is low T/W.

which was his last reply, so this works.

I just cant fetch the last actual tweet from his timeline

Answer

As Iain Shelvington mentioned in the comments, exclude_replies will also ignore replies to oneself.

I don’t think there’s a direct way of getting a user’s last tweet in their timeline. You could create a function that from the retrieved tweets, gets the first one that:

a) is not a reply, i.e., in_reply_to_screen_name = None.

b) or replies to themselves, i.e., in_reply_to_screen_name = screen_name.

This could look something like:

def get_last_timeline_tweet(screen_name: str, tweets: list):
    for tw in tweets:
        if (tw.in_reply_to_screen_name is None or
                tw.in_reply_to_screen_name == screen_name):
            return tw
    return None

Then, running:

last_timeline_tweet = get_last_timeline_tweet('elonmusk', tweetL).full_text
print(last_timeline_tweet)

You get:

Warm, sunny day & snowy mountains [url to the photo]

This can also be done in a one-liner with:

screen_name = 'elonmusk'

last_tweet = next((tw for tw in tweetL if tw.in_reply_to_screen_name is None
                   or tw.in_reply_to_screen_name == screen_name), None)

print(last_tweet.full_text)

Note: it should be checked that last_tweet is not None before getting its full_text.