QuickTwit: PHP API for Fetching Tweets

This is a PHP API wrapping the Twitter search APIs. It follows the same pattern as an ASP:Repeater style control in which you declare a header template that is rendered at the beginning on the tweet list, an item template that is rendered for each tweet matching the search criteria, and a footer template that is rendered after all items have been processed. Most of the search criteria have been implemented including: Creator, To, Contains, Ands, Ors, Nots, and tweet dates.

Methods
setSearchAttributes($creator, $to, $contains, $ands, $ors, $nots, $startDate, $endDate, $numResults): Sets the search criteria. Pass blank strings for any unimportant criteria. $numResults is integer number of results to return.
setHeaderTemplate(string $inTemplateText): Set’s the header template which is drawn before the items and footer
setItemTemplate(string $inTemplateText): Set’s the Item template which is drawn before the items and after the header
setFooterTemplate(string $inTemplateText): Set’s the Footer template which is drawn after the items and header
setDateFormat(string $newFormat): Sets the format used when rendering a date in any of the templates
setTimeFormat(string $newFormat): Sets the format used when rendering a time in any of the templates
getTweets(): Triggers the execution of the tweet search and drawing of the templates

Usage
The API works by assigning a header, item, and footer template as well as search criteria. When getTweets is called, the search is executed according to the criteria. The header template is drawn, followed by the item template for each returned tweet, and finally the footer template is drawn. A number of keywords can be used in the templates which will be replaced with the search-returned values at render time. Those keywords are:
[$Creator]: Creator of the tweet
[$Date]: Date of the tweet
[$Time]: Time of the tweet
[$Tweet]: Plain text of the tweet
[$PostID]: Twitter’s unique post ID
[$UserID]: Twitter’s unique user ID
[$sCreator]: The item passed to setSearchCriteria as the $Creator variable*
[$SearchStartDate]: The item passed to setSearchCriteria as the $startDate variable*
[$SearchEndDate]: The item passed to setSearchCriteria as the $endDate variable*
*Most keywords will be blank when used in header and footer templates since no search item is active. These keywords will have meaningful values in header and footer templates.

Apart from keyword replacement the templates will be drawn exactly as specified to the set*Template functions.

Examples
This is code similar to that in use on the front-page to retrieve my five latest tweets:

	$test = new QuickTwit();
	$test->setHeaderTemplate("[#sCreator]&#39;s Tweets<hr />");
	$test->setFooterTemplate("<hr />");
	$test->setItemTemplate("<p>Creator: [#Creator]<br />Date:[#Date]<br />Tweet:[#HTMLTweet]<br />Blah: [#PostID] [#UserID] [#SearchStartDate] [#SearchEndDate]</p>");
	$test->setSearchAttributes("LilMikeyDotCom", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", 5);
	$test->getTweets();

Unfortunately I don’t have the phpExec plugin installed so I can’t run the thing live but at the time of posting the result looked like this:

LilMikeyDotCom's Tweets


That’s a simple creator-based search but with the criteria you can go subject or date based as well. Here’s 10 posts since Feb 1st, 2009 with watchmen and movie in them (since it looks awesome) and not comic (since comics are for nerds):


$test = new QuickTwit();
$test->setHeaderTemplate("<hr />");
$test->setFooterTemplate("<hr />");
$test->setItemTemplate("<p>Creator: [#Creator]<br>Date:[#Date]<BR>Tweet:[#HTMLTweet]<BR></p>");
$test->setSearchAttributes("", "", "watchmen movie", "", "", "comic", "", "", 10);
$test->getTweets();


Results:

Creator: ZuckerBaby (ZuckerBaby)
Date:02-15-2009
Tweet:@Bronzethumb And this is where my fear about the Watchmen movie comes in. Stylish, looks like the book? Yes. Content remains awesome? Hmmmm

Creator: zegolf (Zach Egolf)
Date:02-15-2009
Tweet:Anyone have an opinion on the Watchmen movie? Is it going to be good?


You get the keyword highlighting for free from twitter in the html tweet.

So, here’s the source. Have a ball.

No Comments »

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment

Back to Blog