Question

I’m trying to make a simple site that uses php and the Twitter API to write out my latest post from twitter. I found a tutorial showing me how to get my timeline (or last 20 posts) in xml format, but can’t figure out how to print out just the latest post, and just the text of it (not the time, date, etc that come with the xml/rss/etc).

My code looks like this

<h2 id = "latest">
    <?php
        var $username='myusername';  
        var $password='mypassword'; 
        var $responseInfo=array();

        function latest_status($format='json',$id=null) {
            $request = 'http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline.'.$format;
            if($id) {
                $postargs = "id=$id";
                return $this->process($request,$postargs);
            }
            return $this->process($request);
        }

        echo latest_status("json");
    ?>
</h2>

And it’s returning this:

[{“contributors”:null,”created_at”:”Tue
Feb 16 19:56:08 +0000
2010″,”in_reply_to_user_id”:null,”source”:”API”,”favorited”:false,”in_reply_to_status_id”:null,”truncated”:false,”user”:{“notifications”:null,”profile_link_color”:”0000ff”,”description”:””,”verified”:false,”profile_background_tile”:false,”created_at”:”Tue
Feb 16 01:16:15 +0000
2010″,”profile_background_color”:”9ae4e8″,”profile_image_url”:”http://s.twimg.com/a/1265999168/images/default_profile_1_normal.png“,”time_zone”:”Hawaii”,”profile_sidebar_fill_color”:”e0ff92″,”followers_count”:0,”screen_name”:”whisperingweb”,”lang”:”en”,”friends_count”:0,”profile_sidebar_border_color”:”87bc44″,”statuses_count”:2,”following”:null,”protected”:false,”favourites_count”:1,”location”:””,”name”:”Chris
Armstrong”,”contributors_enabled”:false,”profile_text_color”:”000000″,”id”:114608397,”geo_enabled”:true,”profile_background_image_url”:”http://s.twimg.com/a/1265999168/images/themes/theme1/bg.png“,”utc_offset”:-36000,”url”:null},”in_reply_to_screen_name”:null,”geo”:null,”id”:9199090048,”text”:”Someone
was on your
website”},{“favorited”:false,”source”:”web”,”in_reply_to_user_id”:null,”created_at”:”Tue
Feb 16 18:50:21 +0000
2010″,”geo”:null,”user”:{“verified”:false,”description”:””,”notifications”:false,”profile_text_color”:”000000″,”screen_name”:”whisperingweb”,”profile_background_image_url”:”http://s.twimg.com/a/1265999168/images/themes/theme1/bg.png“,”url”:null,”profile_link_color”:”0000ff”,”followers_count”:0,”statuses_count”:2,”profile_background_tile”:false,”created_at”:”Tue
Feb 16 01:16:15 +0000
2010″,”friends_count”:0,”profile_background_color”:”9ae4e8″,”contributors_enabled”:false,”time_zone”:”Hawaii”,”favourites_count”:0,”profile_sidebar_fill_color”:”e0ff92″,”protected”:false,”location”:””,”name”:”Chris
Armstrong”,”lang”:”en”,”geo_enabled”:true,”profile_sidebar_border_color”:”87bc44″,”id”:114608397,”following”:false,”utc_offset”:-36000,”profile_image_url”:”http://s.twimg.com/a/1265999168/images/default_profile_1_normal.png“},”contributors”:null,”in_reply_to_status_id”:null,”id”:9196705546,”in_reply_to_screen_name”:null,”truncated”:false,”text”:”The
quick brown fox jumps over the lazy
dog”}]

I’m pretty new to php, and completely new to the Twitter API, so would appreciate any help or advice.

edit: Have changed example from xml to json

Answer 1

Use format=’json’ instead: json_decode($response)[0][‘text’].

In this case, use JSON because it has a much more natural mapping to PHP’s internal datatypes, which makes it dead-easy to extract the content you want. You can still use XML, but you have to iterate over the resulting structure, which is relatively complex.