Twitter

Grab a Twitter feed with php and cache it with the following code.

Change the Twitter ID at the bottom of the code.

It will create a twitter.txt file to store the cached feed. You may need to set write permissions on it or the folder it’s in.

<?php

/**
 * TWITTER FEED PARSER
 *
 * @version    1.1.4
 * @author    Jonathan Nicol
 * @link    http://f6design.com/journal/2010/10/07/display-recent-twitter-tweets-using-php/
 *
 * Notes:
 * Caching is employed because Twitter only allows their RSS feeds to be accesssed 150
 * times an hour per user client.
 * --
 * Dates can be displayed in Twitter style (e.g. "1 hour ago") by setting the
 * $twitter_style_dates param to true.
 *
 * Credits:
 * Hashtag/username parsing based on: http://snipplr.com/view/16221/get-twitter-tweets/
 * Feed caching: http://www.addedbytes.com/articles/caching-output-in-php/
 * Feed parsing: http://boagworld.com/forum/comments.php?DiscussionID=4639
 */

function display_latest_tweets(
 $twitter_user_id,
 $cache_file = 'twitter/twitter.txt',
 $tweets_to_display = 1,
 $ignore_replies = false,
 $twitter_wrap_open = '<ul style="margin:0;padding:0;">',
 $twitter_wrap_close = '</ul>',
 $tweet_wrap_open = '<li style="list-style-type:none;"><span>',
 $meta_wrap_open = '</span><span> ',
 $meta_wrap_close = '</span>',
 $tweet_wrap_close = '</li>',
 $date_format = 'g:i A M jS',
 $twitter_style_dates = false){

 // Seconds to cache feed (1 hour).
 $cachetime = 60*60;
 // Time that the cache was last filled.
 $cache_file_created = ((file_exists($cache_file))) ? filemtime($cache_file) : 0;

 // A flag so we know if the feed was successfully parsed.
 $tweet_found = false;

 // Show file from cache if still valid.
 if (time() - $cachetime < $cache_file_created) {

 $tweet_found = true;
 // Display tweets from the cache.
 readfile($cache_file);

 } else {

 // Cache file not found, or old. Fetch the RSS feed from Twitter.
 $rss = file_get_contents('https://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.rss?screen_name='.$twitter_user_id);

 if($rss) {

 // Parse the RSS feed to an XML object.
 $xml = simplexml_load_string($rss);

 if($xml !== false) {

 // Error check: Make sure there is at least one item.
 if (count($xml->channel->item)) {

 $tweet_count = 0;

 // Start output buffering.
 ob_start();

 // Open the twitter wrapping element.
 $twitter_html = $twitter_wrap_open;

 // Iterate over tweets.
 foreach($xml->channel->item as $tweet) {

 // Twitter feeds begin with the username, "e.g. User name: Blah"
 // so we need to strip that from the front of our tweet.
 $tweet_desc = substr($tweet->description,strpos($tweet->description,":")+2);
 $tweet_desc = htmlspecialchars($tweet_desc);
 $tweet_first_char = substr($tweet_desc,0,1);

 // If we are not ignoring replies, or tweet is not a reply, process it.
 if ($tweet_first_char!='@' || $ignore_replies==false){

 $tweet_found = true;
 $tweet_count++;

 // Add hyperlink html tags to any urls, twitter ids or hashtags in the tweet.
 $tweet_desc = preg_replace('/(https?:\/\/[^\s"<>]+)/','<a href="$1">$1</a>',$tweet_desc);
 $tweet_desc = preg_replace('/(^|[\n\s])@([^\s"\t\n\r<:]*)/is', '$1<a href="http://twitter.com/$2">@$2</a>', $tweet_desc);
 $tweet_desc = preg_replace('/(^|[\n\s])#([^\s"\t\n\r<:]*)/is', '$1<a href="http://twitter.com/search?q=%23$2">#$2</a>', $tweet_desc);

 // Convert Tweet display time to a UNIX timestamp. Twitter timestamps are in UTC/GMT time.
 $tweet_time = strtotime($tweet->pubDate);
 if ($twitter_style_dates){
 // Current UNIX timestamp.
 $current_time = time();
 $time_diff = abs($current_time - $tweet_time);
 switch ($time_diff)
 {
 case ($time_diff < 60):
 $display_time = $time_diff.' seconds ago';
 break;
 case ($time_diff >= 60 && $time_diff < 3600):
 $min = floor($time_diff/60);
 $display_time = $min.' minutes ago';
 break;
 case ($time_diff >= 3600 && $time_diff < 86400):
 $hour = floor($time_diff/3600);
 $display_time = 'about '.$hour.' hour';
 if ($hour > 1){ $display_time .= 's'; }
 $display_time .= ' ago';
 break;
 default:
 $display_time = date($date_format,$tweet_time);
 break;
 }
 } else {
 $display_time = date($date_format,$tweet_time);
 }

 // Render the tweet.
 $twitter_html .= $tweet_wrap_open.html_entity_decode($tweet_desc).$meta_wrap_open.'<a href="http://twitter.com/'.$twitter_user_id.'">'.$display_time.'</a>'.$meta_wrap_close.$tweet_wrap_close;

 }

 // If we have processed enough tweets, stop.
 if ($tweet_count >= $tweets_to_display){
 break;
 }

 }

 // Close the twitter wrapping element.
 $twitter_html .= $twitter_wrap_close;
 echo $twitter_html;

 // Generate a new cache file.
 $file = fopen($cache_file, 'w');

 // Save the contents of output buffer to the file, and flush the buffer.
 fwrite($file, ob_get_contents());
 fclose($file);
 ob_end_flush();

 }
 }
 }
 }
 // In case the RSS feed did not parse or load correctly, show a link to the Twitter account.
 if (!$tweet_found){
 echo $twitter_wrap_open.$tweet_wrap_open.'Oops, our twitter feed is unavailable right now. '.$meta_wrap_open.'<a href="http://twitter.com/'.$twitter_user_id.'">Follow us on Twitter</a>'.$meta_wrap_close.$tweet_wrap_close.$twitter_wrap_close;
 }
}

display_latest_tweets('stcloudrox');

?>