Question

So far I have been trying to update the twitter profile bg image thr the twitter api with php… and without success

Many examples on the web, including this one:
Updating Twitter background via API
and this one
Twitter background upload with API and multi form data
do not work at all, most ppl throw out answers without actually testing the code.

I found that directly submit the image to the twitter.com thr html form, it will work:

<form action="http://twitter.com/account/update_profile_background_image.xml" enctype="multipart/form-data" method="post">
    File: <input type="file" name="image" /><br/>
    <input type="submit" value="upload bg">
</form>

(although the browser will prompt you for the twitter account username and password)

However, if I want to go thr the same process with php, it fails

<?php
if( isset($_POST["submit"]) ) {

    $target_path = "";
    $target_path = $target_path . basename( $_FILES['myfile']['name']); 

    if(move_uploaded_file($_FILES['myfile']['tmp_name'], $target_path)) {
        // "The file ".  basename( $_FILES['myfile']['name']). " has been uploaded<br/>";
    } else{
        // "There was an error uploading the file, please try again!<br/>";
    }

    $ch = curl_init('http://twitter.com/account/update_profile_background_image.xml');
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPAUTH, CURLAUTH_ANY);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERPWD, $_POST['name'] . ':' . $_POST['pass']);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array('Expect:'));
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 1);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, array('image' => base64_encode(file_get_contents($target_path))));

    $rsp = curl_exec($ch);
    echo "<pre>" . str_replace("<", "&lt;", $rsp) . "</pre>";

}
?>
<form enctype="multipart/form-data" method="post">
<input type="hidden" name="submit" value="1"/>
name:<input type="text" name="name" value=""/><br/>
pass:<input type="password" name="pass" value=""/><br/>
File: <input type="file" name="myfile" /><br/>
<input type="submit" value="upload bg">
</form>

The strange thing of this code is that.. it successfully returns the twitter XML, WITHOUT having the profile background image updated. So at the end it still fails.

Many thanks for reading this. It will be great if you can help. Please kindly test your code first before throwing out answers, many many thanks.

Answer 1

This is what works for me (debug stuff left in):

$url      = 'http://twitter.com/account/update_profile_background_image.xml';
$uname    = 'myuname';
$pword    = 'mypword';
$img_path = '/path/to/myimage.jpg';
$userpwd  = $uname . ':' . $pword;
$img_post = array('image' => '@' . $img_path . ';type=image/jpeg',
                  'tile'  => 'true');

$opts = array(CURLOPT_URL => $url,
              CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION => true,
              CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
              CURLOPT_HEADER => true,
              CURLOPT_POST => true,
              CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => $img_post,
              CURLOPT_HTTPAUTH => CURLAUTH_ANY,
              CURLOPT_USERPWD => $userpwd,
              CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => array('Expect:'),
              CURLINFO_HEADER_OUT => true);

$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt_array($ch, $opts);
$response = curl_exec($ch);
$err      = curl_error($ch);
$info     = curl_getinfo($ch);
curl_close($ch);

echo '<pre>';
echo $err . '<br />';
echo '----------------' . '<br />';
print_r($info);
echo '----------------' . '<br />';
echo htmlspecialchars($response) . '<br />';
echo '</pre>';