How to Retrieve Twitter Timeline and Hashtags in PHP

How to Retrieve Twitter Timeline and Hashtags in PHP
by Janeth Kent Date: 12-07-2013 twitter php programming development hashtag OAuth API

How to Retrieve Twitter Timeline and Hashtags in PHP (Twitter OAuth API 1.1)

So, here we offer a guide that explains how to retrieve user timeline and hashtag with Twitter REST API 1.1.

Before we start, we need:

  • You need to create an application.https://dev.twitter.com/apps.
  • Now, you need to get your consumer key, consumer secret, access token and access token secret.
  • We use a Twitter Library called CodeBird-PHP.
  • To make all the tweets we retrieve pretty, we will be using Grid-A-Licious

 

THE HTML

Since all HTML Markup will be generated by jQuery, we only need a div with an id called#jstwitter


<div id="jstwitter"></div>
<div class="item">
{IMG}
<div class="tweet-wrapper">
<span class="text">{TEXT}</span>
<span class="time">
<a href="{URL}" target="_blank">{AGO}</a>
</span>
by
<span class="user">{USER}</span>
</div>
</div>

THE CSS

We are going to create a Pinterest style with Grid-A-Licious.


#jstwitter {
position: relative;
}
#jstwitter .item {
-webkit-border-radius:5px;
-moz-border-radius:5px;
border-radius:5px;
-webkit-box-shadow:0 0 3px 1px rgba(100,100,100,0.2);
-moz-box-shadow:0 0 3px 1px rgba(100,100,100,0.2);
box-shadow:0 0 3px 1px rgba(100,100,100,0.2);
overflow:hidden;
background: #fff;
}
#jstwitter .tweet-wrapper {
padding:10px;
-webkit-box-sizing:border-box;
-moz-box-sizing:border-box;
box-sizing:border-box;
line-height:16px;
}
#jstwitter .item a {
text-decoration: none;
color: #03a8e5;
}
#jstwitter .item img {
width:100%;
}
#jstwitter .item a:hover {
text-decoration: underline;
}
#jstwitter .item .text {
display:block;
}
#jstwitter .item .time, #jstwitter .tweet .user {
font-style: italic;
color: #666666;
}

THE PHP CODE

We're not going to write our own PHP OAuth authentication, we will be using a Twitter Library called CodeBird-PHP (CodeBird Documentation)


<?
//We use already made Twitter OAuth library
//https://github.com/mynetx/codebird-php
require_once ('codebird.php');
 
//Twitter OAuth Settings
$CONSUMER_KEY = '...';
$CONSUMER_SECRET = '...';
$ACCESS_TOKEN = '...';
$ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET = '...';
 
//Get authenticated
Codebird::setConsumerKey($CONSUMER_KEY, $CONSUMER_SECRET);
$cb = Codebird::getInstance();
$cb->setToken($ACCESS_TOKEN, $ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET);
 
//retrieve posts
$q = $_POST['q'];
$count = $_POST['count'];
$api = $_POST['api'];
 
//https://dev.twitter.com/docs/api/1.1/get/statuses/user_timeline
//https://dev.twitter.com/docs/api/1.1/get/search/tweets
$params = array(
'screen_name' => $q,
'q' => $q,
'count' => $count
);
 
//Make the REST call
$data = (array) $cb->$api($params);
 
//Output result in JSON, getting it ready for jQuery to process
echo json_encode($data);
?>

The Javascript / jQuery

Depend on the parameters, you can either search for hashtag, or load a user timeline. The script sends the parameters to the PHP file, and PHP script gets us authenticated, and PHP returns Twitter data in JSON format. The following scripts read the data and parse them in to HTML markup.

For more information about the Twitter Object, you can read it here.

User Timeline Search Tweets

$(function() {        
            
JQTWEET = {
 
// Set twitter hash/user, number of tweets & id/class to append tweets
// You need to clear tweet-date.txt before toggle between hash and user
// for multiple hashtags, you can separate the hashtag with OR, eg:
// hash: '%23jquery OR %23css'            
search: '%23heroes2013', //leave this blank if you want to show user's tweet
user: 'quenesstestacc', //username
numTweets: 21, //number of tweets
appendTo: '#jstwitter',
useGridalicious: true,
template: '<div class="item">{IMG}<div class="tweet-wrapper"><span class="text">{TEXT}</span>\
<span class="time"><a href="{URL}" target="_blank">{AGO}</a></span>\
by <span class="user">{USER}</span></div></div>',
 
// core function of jqtweet
// https://dev.twitter.com/docs/using-search
loadTweets: function() {
 
var request;
 
// different JSON request {hash|user}
if (JQTWEET.search) {
request = {
q: JQTWEET.search,
count: JQTWEET.numTweets,
api: 'search_tweets'
}
} else {
request = {
q: JQTWEET.user,
count: JQTWEET.numTweets,
api: 'statuses_userTimeline'
}
}
 
$.ajax({
url: 'grabtweets.php',
type: 'POST',
dataType: 'json',
data: request,
success: function(data, textStatus, xhr) {
    
     if (data.httpstatus == 200) {
         if (JQTWEET.search) data = data.statuses;
 
var text, name, img;    
    
try {
// append tweets into page
for (var i = 0; i < JQTWEET.numTweets; i++) {        
 
img = '';
url = 'http://twitter.com/' + data[i].user.screen_name + '/status/' + data[i].id_str;
try {
if (data[i].entities['media']) {
img = '<a href="' + url + '" target="_blank"><img src="' + data[i].entities['media'][0].media_url + '" /></a>';
}
} catch (e) {
//no media
}
 
$(JQTWEET.appendTo).append( JQTWEET.template.replace('{TEXT}', JQTWEET.ify.clean(data[i].text) )
.replace('{USER}', data[i].user.screen_name)
.replace('{IMG}', img)
.replace('{AGO}', JQTWEET.timeAgo(data[i].created_at) )
.replace('{URL}', url )            
);
}
 
} catch (e) {
//item is less than item count
}
 
     if (JQTWEET.useGridalicious) {
     //run grid-a-licious
            $(JQTWEET.appendTo).gridalicious({
                gutter: 13,
                width: 200,
                animate: true
            });    
         }
 
} else alert('no data returned');
 
}
 
});
 
},
 
 
/**
* relative time calculator FROM TWITTER
* @param {string} twitter date string returned from Twitter API
* @return {string} relative time like "2 minutes ago"
*/
timeAgo: function(dateString) {
var rightNow = new Date();
var then = new Date(dateString);
 
if ($.browser.msie) {
// IE can't parse these crazy Ruby dates
then = Date.parse(dateString.replace(/( \+)/, ' UTC$1'));
}
 
var diff = rightNow - then;
 
var second = 1000,
minute = second * 60,
hour = minute * 60,
day = hour * 24,
week = day * 7;
 
if (isNaN(diff) || diff < 0) {
return ""; // return blank string if unknown
}
 
if (diff < second * 2) {
// within 2 seconds
return "right now";
}
 
if (diff < minute) {
return Math.floor(diff / second) + " seconds ago";
}
 
if (diff < minute * 2) {
return "about 1 minute ago";
}
 
if (diff < hour) {
return Math.floor(diff / minute) + " minutes ago";
}
 
if (diff < hour * 2) {
return "about 1 hour ago";
}
 
if (diff < day) {
return Math.floor(diff / hour) + " hours ago";
}
 
if (diff > day && diff < day * 2) {
return "yesterday";
}
 
if (diff < day * 365) {
return Math.floor(diff / day) + " days ago";
}
 
else {
return "over a year ago";
}
}, // timeAgo()
 
 
ify: {
link: function(tweet) {
return tweet.replace(/\b(((https*\:\/\/)|www\.)[^\"\']+?)(([!?,.\)]+)?(\s|$))/g, function(link, m1, m2, m3, m4) {
var http = m2.match(/w/) ? 'http://' : '';
return '<a class="twtr-hyperlink" target="_blank" href="' + http + m1 + '">' + ((m1.length > 25) ? m1.substr(0, 24) + '...' : m1) + '</a>' + m4;
});
},
 
at: function(tweet) {
return tweet.replace(/\B[@@]([a-zA-Z0-9_]{1,20})/g, function(m, username) {
return '<a target="_blank" class="twtr-atreply" href="http://twitter.com/intent/user?screen_name=' + username + '">@' + username + '</a>';
});
},
 
list: function(tweet) {
return tweet.replace(/\B[@@]([a-zA-Z0-9_]{1,20}\/\w+)/g, function(m, userlist) {
return '<a target="_blank" class="twtr-atreply" href="http://twitter.com/' + userlist + '">@' + userlist + '</a>';
});
},
 
hash: function(tweet) {
return tweet.replace(/(^|\s+)#(\w+)/gi, function(m, before, hash) {
return before + '<a target="_blank" class="twtr-hashtag" href="http://twitter.com/search?q=%23' + hash + '">#' + hash + '</a>';
});
},
 
clean: function(tweet) {
return this.hash(this.at(this.list(this.link(tweet))));
}
} // ify
 
 
};        
 
});

And finally, you run the script like this:


$(function () {
// start jqtweet!
JQTWEET.loadTweets();
});

 

 
by Janeth Kent Date: 12-07-2013 twitter php programming development hashtag OAuth API hits : 14602  
 
Janeth Kent

Janeth Kent

Licenciada en Bellas Artes y programadora por pasión. Cuando tengo un rato retoco fotos, edito vídeos y diseño cosas. El resto del tiempo escribo en MA-NO WEB DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT.

 
 
 

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