Twitter Timeline Feed with PHP & JSON

I have had my share of users needing help fixing broken implementations with twitter on their own website, such as pulling from an incorrect url, or using the incorrect twitter API format. Most of the time they are pulling the XML response, but twitter offers a much nicer format that works rather well with PHP; JSON.

Quick Example
A pull from your twitter timeline is as simple as:

<?php
 
$json = file_get_contents("https://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline/karlblessing.json", TRUE);
 
$twitter_feed = json_decode($json, true);
 
// check for errors
if(isset($twitter_feed['errors'])) {
    foreach($twitter_feed['errors'] as $error) {
        echo "(".$error['code'].") ".$error['message']."<br>";
    }
} else {
    // Loop thru and spit out the text of each tweet returned
    foreach($twitter_feed as $tweet) {
        echo $tweet['text']."<br>";
    }
?>

I do not use Twitter often, so course my own feeds may be scarce.

Example utilizing an array

If you wish to have a bit more control over how the content is interpreted. For this we can utilize an array so the data may be used elsewhere on a page.

<?php
/* 
Configuration Array
 
explanation of each option can be seen here : https://dev.twitter.com/docs/api/1/get/statuses/user_timeline
 
user = the screen_name of the twitter user you wish to query
count = the "maximum" number of items to be returned
retweet = true or false to include retweets in the response
entities = true or false
exclude_replies = true or false to exclude replies
contributor_details = true or false
trim_user = true or false to trim extra user details
 
*/
 
$twitter = array(
	"user" => "karlblessing",
	"count" => "4",
	"retweet" => "true",
	"entities" => "true",
	"exclude_replies" => "true",
	"contributor_details" => "false",
	"trim_user" => "false"
);
 
// a small function to convert "created at" time to [blank] minutes/hours/days ago
 
function relativeTime($time)
{
    $delta = strtotime('+2 hours') - strtotime($time);
    if ($delta < 2 * MINUTE) {
        return "1 min ago";
    }
    if ($delta < 45 * MINUTE) {
        return floor($delta / MINUTE) . " min ago";
    }
    if ($delta < 90 * MINUTE) {
        return "1 hour ago";
    }
    if ($delta < 24 * HOUR) {
        return floor($delta / HOUR) . " hours ago";
    }
    if ($delta < 48 * HOUR) {
        return "yesterday";
    }
    if ($delta < 30 * DAY) {
        return floor($delta / DAY) . " days ago";
    }
    if ($delta < 12 * MONTH) {
        $months = floor($delta / DAY / 30);
        return $months <= 1 ? "1 month ago" : $months . " months ago";
    } else {
        $years = floor($delta / DAY / 365);
        return $years <= 1 ? "1 year ago" : $years . " years ago";
    }
}
 
// prepare the array
 
$twitter_feed = array();
 
// form the API url for the request
 
$api_url = "https://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline/".$twitter['user'].
	".json?include_entities=".$twitter['entities'].
	"&include_rts=".$twitter['retweet'].
	"&exclude_replies=".$twitter['exclude_replies'].
	"&contributor_details=".$twitter['contributor_details'].
	"&trim_user=".$twitter['trim_user'].
	"&count=".$twitter['count'];
 
// obtain the results 
 
$json = file_get_contents($api_url, true);
 
// decode the json response as a PHP array
 
$decode = json_decode($json, true);
 
//check for error during the last decode
if(json_last_error != JSON_ERROR_NONE) {
	// http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.json-last-error.php
	$twitter_feed[] = array('error' => "Unable to decode response");
} elseif(isset($decode['errors'])) {
	// just grabbing the first error listed
	$twitter_feed[] = array('error' => $decode['errors'][0]['message']);
} else {
	// if no decode or twitter response errors then proceed.
 
	foreach($decode as $tweet) {
		// If you are including retweets, you may want to check the status
		// as the main text is truncated as opposed to the original tweet
 
		// If you used the trim_user option, the retweeted user screen name will not be avaialble
 
		if (isset($tweet['retweeted_status'])) {
			$tweet_text = "RT @{$tweet['retweeted_status']['user']['screen_name']}: 
			{$tweet['retweeted_status']['text']}";
		} else {
			$tweet_text = $tweet['text'];
		}
 
		$twitter_feed[] = array(
			'text' => $tweet_text, 
			'created_at' => relativeTime($tweet['created_at']),
			'link' => "http://twitter.com/".$twitter['user']."/status/".$tweet['id']
		);
 
		unset($tweet_text);
	}
}
 
unset($decode, $json, $tweet);
?>
 
<?php
 
// in a later portion of your code or page you can break down the array like so:
 
foreach($twitter_feed as $tweet) {
	echo "<a href=\"{$tweet['link']}\" target=\"_blank\">{$tweet['text']}</a><br>{$tweet['created_at']}<br><br>";
}
 
?>

The above would list out a maximum of 4 tweets to the screen as hyperlinks to the status ID, followed by the tweet’s creation date in a format such as “4 days ago”.

If there are a lot of retweets, and you did not include retweets in the response, there is a possibility that your response will be blank. This is because the count is a literal maximum which is not factored after the data has been filtered. So when not including retweets you will want to set your count high enough so that some normal tweets may be returned and then simply limit the number shown via the code.

The option for screen_name from the retweeted status will not be available if you use the user_trim option, so if you wish to use this information, be sure to set it to false.

Additional Information

Most of the information regarding user timelines via the Twitter API can be found at Their Documentation.

text, created_at, id are not the only options you can use. If you were to print_r() the decoded json response you will see all the extra information you may use.

Such as entities which will break down all the hashtags, users_mentioned and urls that were in the tweet. Or you can get the tweet information regarding location (geo, cordinates), or tweet source (such as iphone, application, etc).

Here’s an example of the JSON decoded into a PHP array (using print_r to display) for just one of my own tweets.

If the above were a part of $twitter_feed and we wanted to pull the first URL used in the tweet.

<?php
echo $twitter_feed[1][entities][urls][0][expanded_url];
// would output : http://db.tt/fJi2Poc
?>

And there you have it.

Posted in PHP, Twitter

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KBeezie

Twitter Timeline Feed with PHP & JSON