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How to Add Latest Tweet to WordPress (Without a Plugin)

I decided to add my latest “tweet” from Twitter to the sidebar of my WordPress blog. Rather than use yet another plugin that adds yet another hook – and there are many that do this with lots of code, I decided to use a homegrown solution, dependant only on PHP4+ and cURL  (most webhosts already have cURL compiled in, if not, you should request it).  Adding the following to any of the files in your WordPress theme will print out your current Twitter status and cache the results so you don’t hammer their system.

First, snag your Twitter user id.  Then, open up your theme file.  I put mine in sidebar.php found in /wp-content/themes/<THEMENAME>/.    Use the below code.  If you want the output wrapped in a list, you would need to put <ul> and <li> tags around this code.

Carefully set your variables.  The cache file should be writable.  Note that you can use a decimal value for $tw_BlankAfter and $tw_Minutes if necessary.   That’s it.

Due to what must be a bug in WordPress, please ignore the closing “</text></created_at>” at the end of this post.  It’s trying be smart and “fix” broken tags, but the code is right.

NOTE (2/20/09): I have updated the below code.  The new version can be found at “Posting Your Latest Tweet in WordPress“. 

/* ~~~~ Custom Twitter Bit ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ */
/* ~~~~ Adam S, firsttube.com, twitter @sethadam1 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ */
 
$tw_File = '/path/to/a/static/writable/file/twitter.html';
$tw_Userid='XXXXXXX'; //set to your Twitter user id
$tw_BlankAfter = 30; //blank out status if it's older than this many days
$tw_Minutes = 10; //minutes between reloads
 
$tw_Offset = FALSE; //leave as is
// uncomment below time if you want to allow a manual reset via ?twitter-reset
// if($_SERVER['QUERY_STRING']=='twitter-reset') { $tw_Offset=0; } 
 
/* Do not edit below this line */
if(filemtime($tw_File)&gt;time()-floatval($tw_Offset)) {
	include $tw_File;
} else {
	if(is_writable($tw_File)) { $tw_iswritable=1; }
	$tw_time = (86400*floatval($tw_BlankAfter));
	if($tw_Offset) { $tw_time=$tw_Offset; }
	$tw_hyperlinks = true;
	$tw_c = curl_init();
	curl_setopt($tw_c, CURLOPT_URL,
		"http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/"
		.intval($tw_Userid).".xml");
	curl_setopt($tw_c, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
	$tw_src = curl_exec($tw_c);
	curl_close($tw_c);
	preg_match('/(.*)&lt; \/created_at&gt;/', $tw_src, $tw_d);
	if(strtotime($tw_d[1]) &gt; time()-$tw_time) {
		preg_match('/(.*)&lt; \/text&gt;/', $tw_src, $tw_m);
		$tw_status = htmlentities(str_replace("&amp;","&amp;",$tw_m[1]));
		if( $tw_hyperlinks ) {
			$tw_status = ereg_replace(
			"[[:alpha:]]+://[^&lt;&gt;[:space:]]+[[:alnum:]/]",
			"<a href="\">\\0</a>",
			$tw_status);
		}
		$tw_output = $tw_status;
	} else {
		if($tw_iswritable==1) {file_put_contents($tw_File,''); }
	} 
 
	if($tw_iswritable==1) { file_put_contents($tw_File,$tw_output); }
	echo $tw_output;
}
/* ~~~ /Custom Twitter Bit ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ */

Please note that portions of this code come from the twtter_status() function that was not written by me, but is available from various sources online.

Update: Removed function and put code inline.

Published by Adam S

8 Replies to “How to Add Latest Tweet to WordPress (Without a Plugin)”

  1. I’m not a fan of the use of “global” but I will assume that was one of the portions that you didn’t write and won’t hold it against you.

  2. The global was my addition, although, it’s not actually in use in the real script on this site; I actually added that only to make script re-use easier. There were a few ways to do this, I could’ve passed arguments to the function, or defined the vars in the function, or just had the person replace well marked text inline in the function, but it seemed like this way, even the novice WordPress hacker could quickly mod their theme.

    Can you suggest a better way?

  4. Pingback: How to Add Latest Tweet to Wordpress (Without a Plugin) | About CMS Blog
  5. Pingback: Posts about Twitter Plugins as of February 19, 2009 | The Lessnau Lounge

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