Question

I’ve got a nice little twitter widget on my website that was created using php. I’d like to be able to make sure that when a link appears it is clickable or when I @reply someone it links to their profile. Any help is greatly appreciated.

<?php

function getTwitterStatus($userid){
$url = "http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/$userid.xml?count=1";

$xml = simplexml_load_file($url) or die("could not connect");

       foreach($xml->status as $status){
       $text = $status->text;
       }
       echo $text;
 }

getTwitterStatus("UltanKC");

?>

Answer 1

I have a function which I use for this – it will make links for URLs, twitter user names and twitter hashtags.

function auto_link_twitter ($text)
{
    // properly formatted URLs
    $urls = "/(((http[s]?:\/\/)|(www\.))?(([a-z][-a-z0-9]+\.)?[a-z][-a-z0-9]+\.[a-z]+(\.[a-z]{2,2})?)\/?[a-z0-9._\/~#&=;%+?-]+[a-z0-9\/#=?]{1,1})/is";
    $text = preg_replace($urls, " <a href='$1'>$1</a>", $text);

    // URLs without protocols
    $text = preg_replace("/href=\"www/", "href=\"http://www", $text);

    // Twitter usernames
    $twitter = "/@([A-Za-z0-9_]+)/is";
    $text = preg_replace ($twitter, " <a href='https://twitter.com/$1'>@$1</a>", $text);

    // Twitter hashtags
    $hashtag = "/#([A-Aa-z0-9_-]+)/is";
    $text = preg_replace ($hashtag, " <a href='https://twitter.com/hashtag/$1'>#$1</a>", $text);
    return $text;
}

to use it with your code, edit the line which echoes out the status:

echo auto_link_twitter ($text);