Using Twitter with PHP to automatically post tweets
This is a cool little trick I used on my new site, Surl Mobile Bookmarks. Basically whenever someone adds a new bookmark, I want it to be tweeted. I searched around the web, and found an easy code snippet, that works like a charm.
For my site, when someone adds a bookmark, it posts their site title, description, and keywords into my database, and then adds it to the home page. While that code is happening, I simply use this Twitter PHP code to send the tweet.
First, you need this Twitter class, copy this code into your page:
class Twitter
{
function Twitter() {
die('Cannot instantiate this class(Twitter) in: '.__FILE__);
}
/**
* Attempts to contact twitter and post a message
*
* @param string $uname = Twitter User Name
* @param string $pWord = Twitter Password
* @param string $message = The message to post through the communication system
* @param string $apiUrl = Twitter API Url. (Optional - defaulted to standard XML API)
* @return boolean
**/
function sendTwitter($message='',$apiUrl='http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml')
{
$curl_handle = curl_init();
curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_URL, "$apiUrl");
curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, 2);
curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, "status=$message");
curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_USERPWD, "USERNAME:PASSWORD");
//Attempt to send
$buffer = curl_exec($curl_handle);
curl_close($curl_handle);
if(strpos($buffer,'<error>') !== false)
{
return false;
}
else
{
return true;
}
}
}
Where it says “USERNAME:PASSWORD” , put in your Twitter Username, and Twitter Password.
Then you simply put in this code after all of your PHP functions have happened.
$message = "http://surl.mobi New site posted at Surl.mobi";
$result = Twitter::sendTwitter($message);
if($result)
{
echo "We've posted a tweet about your site entry!";
}
That’s all there is to it! Now your web application can post directly to twitter, which can also help with traffic.
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