James has developed a simple "PHP Wrapper" for calls to Twitter's API v1.1. If Twools doesn’t work, you’ll need to ask your host! Thanks to Tyler Hakes for looking further into this! You may also want to check that your host has the latest root certificates installed for cURL as I’ve had reports of some hosting hosts not bothering to do this. Most hosting environments should have this as standard- check with your host. Don't worry about what this is- but the wrapper script requires this to connect to the Twitter API. You will also need to have cURL installed. I have tested it using PHP 5.2 and above, but really your host should be using 5.4 or higher. Firstly make sure you have a modern version of PHP. not locally) and you may need to check a few things with your host first. Please Note It's best to run this on a web server (i.e. Huge thanks to him- as it is the reason this article is being written and also how my Twitter app, Twools (more about that later on), has been built.
#Get twitter api how to#
The accepted answer to the Stack Overflow question was written by a developer called James Mallison (J7mbo) who has gone out of his way to explain how to do this. I hate when things are made difficult, so I was extremely glad when I came across an easy to understand article on the developers' forum, Stack Overflow on how retrieve data from Twitter using v1.1 of their API. This is partly for creating a more unified experience for end users, but also because they want to gain revenue from advertising and so need a strict control over the use of their data. The reason for forcing you to authenticate is because Twitter wants to control access to their data. Authentication basically means that if you want to connect to the API, you have to say who they are and to prove that you have the authority to access the data for that particular user. However, over the years, that API has become more sophisticated and in June 2013, Twitter (in version 1.1 of its API) have forced all applications interacting with its API to authenticate themselves. Initially, it was very easy for developers to use. Twitter has had an API since 2006 (not long after it started). I am not sure I do either, but all will be revealed.Īs I said in my previous article, an API (short for Application Programming Interface) is a system that allows other applications to talk to an application- receive information from it and send information to it. not yet anyway!ĭon't worry if you have no idea what a PHP Wrapper Script is. Call the file littleApp.php and upload it. This is particularly important if your website runs WordPress as we don't want these files to get mixed up with your WordPress ones. I'd recommend creating a folder or directory called something like " test". We put the text in double quotes and we end the line with a semi-colon (PHP throws a toddler's tantrum if you forget to end a line with a semi-colon!). To do this we will use the "echo" statement in PHP. For now, let's do something really simple, and output some text. I'm not going to give a beginners tutorial on PHP here because there are plenty examples on the web- including a simple PHP intro on the PHP website and an introduction to PHP course on Udemy. To do this we need to use opening and closing PHP tags like this: Īnything that goes in between these tags is seen as PHP. We also need to tell the server when to start and stop reading as PHP. Firstly we'll give the file name the PHP extension ".php" as opposed to the standard ".html" one. We need to initiate PHP in the file so that your server knows what is coming is PHP and not plain old HTML. We'll be using PHP since it's probably the most popular. However, servers can do some magical things before they get sent out by using server side languages. Usually, web pages are just sent from your website's servers as plain old HTML (the language used for web pages). It doesn't matter, just load it up- we're going to write our first script and upload it onto your website. I used to use Notepad++ or Dreamweaver but now use SublimeText. You might use Notepad or Text Editor something similar. I don't know what you use to edit text files on your computer. If this isn't the case, then I hope there is something you can still learn from this article. If you have a WordPress website then the answer to these questions should be yes. I do make a few assumptions, however- you'll have a website and be able to upload files to it (preferably via FTP) and your website should have the server-side language PHP running.
#Get twitter api free#
I passionately believe everyone should have the chance to play with this stuff and free their data. If you're not a developer, don't worry- I plan to make this as easy as possible. Well, it's time to get your hands dirty and actually build that app! In my last article, I explained the steps involved in setting up a developers' account at Twitter and registering your first app- making this as easy as possible.
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