Question

My web app requires users to cast votes via twitter and display those votes in a line chart. Id like to accomplish this whole thing using JavaScript.

My Requirements:

• Using the twitter API, I need to Collect votes in real time and have those votes displayed in a line chart, in real time!

Answer 1

Using the twitter API, I need to Collect votes in real time and have those votes displayed in a line chart, in real time!

If you’re doing real time stuff, you want to use the Streaming API. It’s pretty easy to get up and running quickly using existing open-source client implementations like Phirehose. It comes with some great examples too.

Here‘s their example that tracks a bunch of keywords: you’d probably want to track whatever hashtag people are voting on:

<?php
require_once('../lib/Phirehose.php');
/**
 * Example of using Phirehose to display a live filtered stream using track words 
 */
class FilterTrackConsumer extends Phirehose
{
  /**
   * Enqueue each status
   *
   * @param string $status
   */
  public function enqueueStatus($status)
  {
    /*
     * In this simple example, we will just display to STDOUT rather than enqueue.
     * NOTE: You should NOT be processing tweets at this point in a real application, instead they should be being
     *       enqueued and processed asyncronously from the collection process. 
     */
    $data = json_decode($status, true);
    if (is_array($data) && isset($data['user']['screen_name'])) {
      print $data['user']['screen_name'] . ': ' . urldecode($data['text']) . "\n";
    }
  }
}

// Start streaming
$sc = new FilterTrackConsumer('username', 'password', Phirehose::METHOD_FILTER);
$sc->setTrack(array('morning', 'goodnight', 'hello', 'the'));
$sc->consume();

If you’re low volume, you could probably just shove the tweet right into the database in enqueueStatus.