Get my latest Twitter post with PHP

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

What is $twitter in your code? Do you use an already existing Twitter library to access it? What is $this referring to inside of the function (i.e. where is the rest of the class definition)? And what type is the output of that function (check with var_dump). — poke
Ah yea, sorry. I'm using a library I got from here brandontreb.com/…, I just copied and pasted the bits I figured were relevant. Should I just correct my question by removing $twitter->, or would I be better showing the entire library as it is? — Chris Armstrong

djc djc · Accepted Answer · 2010-02-16T19:42:56

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.

Get my latest Twitter post with PHP

2 Answers