Update Twitter Tweet

Posted by Pete | Posted in PHP Functions | Posted on 12-10-2009-05-2008

0

So in my previous tutorial you have learnt how to get the latest twitter status well now we will learn how to update the twitter status with a random predefined message.

So here is the function that we will use to update the twitter.

function update_twitter($msg) // Start Update Twitter Function
{
 
    $username = "TWITTER USERNAME"; // Twitter Username.
    $password = "TWITTER PASSWORD"; // Twitter Password.
    $url = "http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml"; // Twitter Update URL API.
    $curl_handle = curl_init(); // Start CURL.
    curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_URL, $url); // Url to connect to.
    curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, 2); // Stop if unable to connect in 2 seconds.
    curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1); // Return the information given.
    curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_POST, 1); // Set the method as a post.
    curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, "status=" . $msg); // Put post fields together.
    curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_USERPWD, $username . ":" . $password); // Login to update area.
    $response = curl_exec($curl_handle); // Run Curl and assign output to $response.
    curl_close($curl_handle); // Close Curl.
    if (empty($response)) // If $response is empty. 
    {
        echo "fail"; // It failed to update twitter.
    }
    else
    {
        echo "success"; // Else show success message.
    }
 
}

As you can see it is using curl and is fairly straight forward. First we get the information we need from the variables then we start the curl and set a few options to allow us to process the information to twitter. Finally we check to see if it was successful or not.

So lets use it.

<?php
/** FUNCTION HERE **/
 
/**
 * Put the messages you want to be added in an array.
 * Leaving the first column blank allows PHP to put a incrementing ID in automatically.
 * So each message has a unique array id.
 */
$tweets[][txt] = "Hello This Is Twitter Bot Created By PK-Tuts.";
$tweets[][txt] = "Visit PK-Tuts.co.uk for Website Development Tutorials.";
 
$total = count($tweets); // Count total tweets
$random = rand(0, $total); // Choose a random number from 0 to total tweets
echo update_twitter($tweets[$random]["txt"]); // Run function with random tweet then echo the response.  
?>

This will now add a random predefined message everytime the page is run. This can be used with a cronjob to add a random message every hour etc. Or it can also be used to integrate with wordpress etc so when a new post has been submitted it tells them on twitter. Well I will leave it upto you :P So that’s it any questions please leave a comment. Thanks

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Tutorials Written By Peter Kelly