Zend Framework Blog » cURL http://blog.richardknop.com Zend Framework, PHP, Django, Python, SQL, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, PL/SQL, data model patterns, OOP, design patterns, JavaScript, jQuery, HTML, XHTML, CSS, XML, web services & APIs, Security, E-commerce and much more Sat, 04 Feb 2012 19:47:10 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Working with Twitter API in PHP http://blog.richardknop.com/2009/05/working-with-twitter-api-in-php/ http://blog.richardknop.com/2009/05/working-with-twitter-api-in-php/#comments Fri, 29 May 2009 21:37:55 +0000 Richard Knop http://blog.richardknop.com/?p=242 Twitter is one of the fastest growing social networks around and many people want to integrate it (in different ways) on their website. Fortunately, the Twitter API is well documented and easy to use (it is based on the HTTP protocol and everything is done through GET or POST requests).

PHP’s cURL extension is an ideal tool for working with the twitter API. I will show you few examples of most common twitter related tasks.

Getting recent statuses from an authenticating user

URI: http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline.format

  1. $username = 'your_username';
  2. $password = 'your_password';
  3.  
  4. // initialize a cURL session
  5. $ch = curl_init('http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline.xml?screen_name=' . $username);
  6. // wait 2 miliseconds for connection
  7. curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, 2);
  8. // do output to curl_exec()
  9. curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
  10. // username and password
  11. curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERPWD, $username . ':' . $password);
  12. // execute the cURL session and use its output to create a new SimpleXML object
  13. $xml = new SimpleXMLElement(curl_exec($ch));
  14. // close the session to free up system resources
  15. curl_close($ch);

The $xml object contains the last 20 statuses of the specified user. To print the last status:

  1. echo $xml->status[0]->text;

Or you can iterate through the object and print all statuses:

  1. foreach ($xml->status as $status) {
  2.     echo $status->text, '<br />', "\n";
  3. }

Posting a status

URI: http://twitter.com/statuses/update.format

  1. $username = 'your_username';
  2. $password = 'your_password';
  3. $status = 'your status (max 140 characters)';
  4.  
  5. // initialize a cURL session
  6. $ch = curl_init('http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml');
  7. // wait 2 miliseconds for connection
  8. curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, 2);
  9. // do not output to curl_exec()
  10. curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 0);
  11. // do a regular HTTP POST
  12. curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
  13. // HTTP POST data
  14. curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, 'status=' . $status);
  15. // username and password
  16. curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERPWD, $username . ':' . $password);
  17. // execute the cURL session
  18. curl_exec($ch);
  19. // close the session to free up system resources
  20. curl_close($ch);

Deleting a status

URI: http://twitter.com/statuses/destroy/id.format

  1. $username = 'your_username';
  2. $password = 'your_password';
  3. $id = 'id of the status you want to delete';
  4.  
  5. // initialize a cURL session
  6. $ch = curl_init('http://twitter.com/statuses/destroy/' . $id . '.xml');
  7. // wait 2 miliseconds for connection
  8. curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, 2);
  9. // do not output to curl_exec()
  10. curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 0);
  11. // do a regular HTTP POST
  12. curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
  13. // username and password
  14. curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERPWD, $username . ':' . $password);
  15. // execute the cURL session
  16. curl_exec($ch);
  17. // close the session to free up system resources
  18. curl_close($ch);
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