Please notice that I use windows for my php development screencasts. If you are using linux or Mac Os you’ll need to install their respective software bundles. I recommend you check the following links.

Mac Os: http://www.mamp.info/en/index.html

Linux(Ubuntu): http://www.howtoforge.com/ubuntu_lamp_for_newbies

Feel free to ask any question you may have, I gladly answer them ASAP.

I still have many ideas I would like to develop. Like user registration with features like keeping track of posts and link emailing. I am still thinking on ways to improve it. I will also redesign it’s ui as it isn’t nice enough. I hope it’s useful for someone and that it actually gets used.  Contact me if you have any doubt or if you spot any bug. Please comment about it xD.

PHP is a very versatile scripting language. In this tutorial I will be explaining how to create a PHP class that will help you post and get information from a twitter account using the client URL library (cURL).

Tutorial Details

• Program: PHP/Twitter API
• Version: 1
• Difficulty: Easy
• Estimated Completion Time: 10 minutes

Step 1 – Starting up

Let’s begin. First, we will create a file named twit.php which will contain our class. Once created, we declare our class and name it twit.

Step 2 – The Constructor

We will now add our class’s public variables and its constructor. The constructor is a special function that will be run when we create a new instance of the class.

Now we have defined the two variables that we will be using throughout the class. These will be defined when a new instance of the class is created, thanks to our __construct method.

Step 3 – Posting

It’s time to define our first method.

The postStatus method will be used to tweet directly to our account, to achieve this we use the cURL to post using twitter’s api. The setup is simple and configured as specified on the twitter api page. The method returns true or false based upon the response code sent back from twitter this, makes the class easier to be used within another page in order to display success/error messages or trigger some other action.

Let’s try our class and see what we have so far.
Create another php file and try the following code in it. Make sure to replace USER and PASSWORD with your twitter username and password.

If everything is working correctly you should see the post on your twitter account and it should appear as posted through the API.

Step 4 – Getting

Finally, we will define our second and last method which, is going to help us get the information of our last twitter status.

This time we will be using the cURL’s get option, which will allow us to get the information from the twitter server.
In this method I am using a simplexml object to make the task of managing information easier, since we will be receiving a lot of data from the server.

Let’s try the new method out! Create a new PHP file and insert the following code into it. Once again, make sure to replace USER and PASSWORD with your corresponding twitter username and password.

You will get a lot of data, but since it’s stored in a simplexml object it is quite easy to manipulate it.
For example, if you wanted to get the text from your last post you could use:

Which would echo whatever you wrote in your last update. Using this same method you can access all of the data provided.

Conclusion

Twitter’s API is quite easy to manipulate. It is a very repetitive task though, so an object-oriented approach can help us making the process easier. Using these two methods as example, you should be able to expand the class or create your own approach to it. Nevertheless you should now be able to play with the Twitter API and manipulate Twitter’s data.

Further reading

I would recommend reading these in order to get a deeper view of what we covered in this tutorial.

• PHP Client URL Library Manual
• Twitter API Wiki
• PHP SimpleXML Object Manual

Photoshop Hotkey Map.

I already started using it and it actually made learning these easier. please comment if you like it and if you don’t still do so.

The content is basically the same format as the old site but, it’s theme is different. I am no longer looking for a job but showing everyone who comes into the site who am I and what I do. The portfolio is the only page that I think is missing stuff so, I will be editing it later on. I will be adding information about the presented project and my other projects as well. The about page is probably the most unprofessional part of the page (which is what I am looking for with the general look of the new site). It features no about me info and, I actually slashed that through. I wrote contact me next to it so I could fix the identity issue and developed a nice web form.  It’s powered with ajax and features real-time field value checking and Ajax submit, on the back-end I have a simple and very well structured php script. This script basically double checks the submitted information and emails it to me (It also features some anti-spam technology of mine ). I am only missing my custom-made matching wordpress theme (which I am already working on) so you should see a change in the blog if you come on later this week .

That’s basically it. I also customized my 404 error pages . I also made this image to give you a tour.

MWPS 2009 Site Tour

Yes people it is true. I am not joking or anything. I wouldn’t joke with something like this… The new firefox is out and it is the  best firefox yet. Go check it out:http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/firefox.html

I am already loving it

I would recommend checking this video out, as it gives you an insight of what’s new with this firefox build.

I made an example of this function’s usage using JavaScript, check it out here

Well, there’s something really special about this variable, it allows you to get information directly from the url…. yeah that’s right there’s a way to get fast user input directly from the url no forms or anything, it doesn’t necessarily needs to be user input it can also be a script leaving behind some variables for the next script and many other uses you will be able to figure out by yourself after you are done with this tutorial…. the most know use for is used on most CMS and simple page scripts. Still figuring out how does it work? I am pretty sure you will recognize how it works with this example:

In the above example you can see something odd about the url the “?id=home” after the file name well that’s exactly where your $_GET variables are gotten from. I guess some of you will just think of the thousands of possibilities this opens and, how you can use it to improve your scripts.
But how do I get the information stored on the “?id=home”?
That’s simple first of you need to know that the above its saying that “id” equals “home” just as a variable $x = y;. Now that you know what it means you should be able to get the information easily.
Well to use that information it is recommended that you assign a variable with it so, you could use it directly but you won’t be able to edit it along the script also this helps making it easier to call and read. This is how it works:

simple isn’t it? now you can call the variable using $id and you will see how it gets whatever text it’s on the url.
a simple way to see this in action is making a simple script:

In the above example we set $id with the value that came with url and then we echo ‘ed it.
This is the simplified basics behind this variable but you can use this for a multitude of things. Before we go on to the “multitude of things” I want to show you how to get multiple values from a single url, yep that’s right you aren’t limited to 1 variable after the ?, you are limited….well you are not limited on the number of values you can get from the url like this.
But how do I get multiple values from the url do I separate them with a comma or what?
well in fact you could separate them with a comma but that’s the less practical way the best way is to add additional values to the url like this:

Noticed how I added an additional variable and value there? yeah I simply added a &(meaning “and”) and added an additional Name = Value, please notice that there is no additional ? after the &.
ok now I have two variables to play with but how do I manipulate both of them?
well this simple example can explain it better than what I could:

see how simple it is? if the file above was named “page.php” and I typed in:

In the browser I would get this:

Easy right? well this is how you add multiple variable names and values through the url.
Now what? What can I do with all this information I just learned? well, I decided to include a little practical example.

Remember that I mentioned that this is commonly used in simple page systems? Well this is how it’s done:
Imagine you want to have a specific page style to be used to display some articles you could make a new HTML page for each article (which would make you waste time and effort on ) or you could use a dynamic page to grab whatever page is requested from the url and simply append the contents to the page style you want to use.
If you voted for the second option this is a way of doing it, it might get a little out of the scope of the tutorial but its only to illustrate a use for it:
First, we need to make sure a value is always set, we going to use the variable $id and $page to specify a page name($id) and a page number($page). to make sure that there’s a variable value always not only when it’s specified on the url (i.e. to display a homepage) we do a simple check !isset (means “is not set”) if this is true then a default value is used. this is how it should look like:

ok now we are sure the variable is always there next thing we need is the html, our “template” so we make a simple html template mine looks like this:

That’s enough for it to work. Okay, now it’s time to add some content. so we add a include into the body:

ok that should work perfectly but let’s add some additional stuff to make it look nicer and more dynamic… we can add a title dynamically getting it from the page name:

ok our tile is dynamically changed but this script is still missing some stuff for it to be practical we will add a file check before including the content and an error in case the file doesn’t exist:

now it’s done you should have this or something quite similar to it:

now you need to create a folder called “pages” in the same directory you have this script , files inside should be ending with a .php and should be named like this “name-number.php” starting from number 1 for it to work with no problems. With this you can now call the file using the a url.

this would open file : name-2.php in the body.
Okay, there you got it we have gone through all the basics behind the $_GET variable and now you know how special it is. You also know how practical it can be and how much time it can save you (as PHP can in general) and we also went through a practical example which can obviously be expanded as much as you want to make… idk… a full CMS or anything you can dream of…
Hope this helped you understand one important part behind PHP. if by any reason you don’t understand something or have a question or simply love it just leave a comment here.