SimpleTwit

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Everything a developer needs to pull in a Twitter feed, OAuth handling, caching, and more. All without predefined styles that can just get in the way.

Author:George Yates III (profile at wordpress.org)
WordPress version required:3.3
WordPress version tested:3.5.2
Plugin version:1.3
Added to WordPress repository:11-07-2013
Last updated:17-10-2014
Warning! This plugin has not been updated in over 2 years. It may no longer be maintained or supported and may have compatibility issues when used with more recent versions of WordPress.
Rating, %:100
Rated by:1
Plugin URI:https://github.com/GYatesIII/SimpleTwit
Total downloads:1 581
Active installs:10+
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A plugin for developers and designers that sets up a WP_Cron to pull in and cache a user’s stream using OAuth and the Twitter v1.1 REST API. It’s all that a developer needs to incorporate a Twitter feed on their site, the OAuth handling, caching to avoid rate limiting, and utilities to easily format Tweets correctly without predefined styles to work around. For designers, the plugin creates a widget that can be used to easily display and style Tweets in your theme.

Features

  • Provides access to a user’s Tweets for both designers and developers
  • Creates a widget for easy display of the latest Tweets in your theme’s sidebar
  • Clearly designates Retweets and Replies to allow easy styling and manipulation
  • Easily set Username and OAuth credentials
  • Caches Tweets to prevent rate limiting problems
  • Hooks into WP_Cron for easy installation and automatic API calls
  • Uses OAuth and the v1.1 Twitter REST API

Usage

There are two main ways to access the Tweets, one aimed at developers and one aimed at designers.

For Designers

This plugin creates a widget that allows display of the most recent Tweets in any sidebar in your theme. When adding the widget you can customize how many Tweets and what information is displayed, choosing from content, time, author, and source. The widget outputs HTML5 which with classes to style on every element, including flagging Tweets as Retweets and Replies. You will be able to style this widget to look exactly as you need it it to.

For Developers

For those with something special in mind and willing to get their hands dirty, this plugin provides powerful access to the DB of Tweets. Tweets can be grabbed through a template tag and are provided in a special object jam packed with features:

STF_Tweet

An array of these objects is returned by the template tag instead of the WP_Post object, or an individual can be constructed by passing the post ID of the Tweet to the object constructor.

The object provides a number of useful methods when working with Tweets. This object has the following accessible properties:

  • is_retweet – This boolean will be true when the Tweet is a Retweet
  • is_reply – This boolean will be true when the Tweet is a Reply to another Tweet
  • content – The content of the Tweet, this will be automatically formatted to link other referenced Twitter users, hashtags, and inline links
  • time – A timestamp of the Tweet, timezoned to the WP install, in Y-m-d H:i:s format
  • time_gmt – A timestamp of the Tweet, timezoned to GMT, in Y-m-d H:i:s format
  • time_str – The string that represents how long it’s been since the Tweet, in the way that Twitter usually dates its Tweets, good for an international audience since this isn’t timezone specicific

The object has the following methods:

  • get_source() – Returns the string representing the device used to Tweet this status
  • get_raw_tweet() – Returns the cached raw response from the API as an object, this should rarely be used as almost all information on the Tweet is accessible without loading this object
  • get_author_link() – Returns a string that is the link to the Tweet’s author’s page on Twitter
  • get_retweet_info() – Returns the info on the original Tweet of a Retweet, or false if the Tweet is not a Retweet, the object returned contains:
    • username – The Twitter username of the original Tweet
    • screenname – The Twitter screenname of the original Tweet
    • content – The unformatted content of the original Tweet
    • time_gmt – The GMT time of the Retweet
    • url – A direct link to the original Tweet
    • user_url – A direct link to the profile of the original Twitter user
  • get_reply_info() – Returns the info on the original status that this Tweet is replying to, the info is as follows:
    • url – The direct link to the original status
    • in_reply_to_name – The screenname of the original Twitter user
    • in_reply_to_user_url – The direct link to the original Twitter user’s profile
  • get_author_info() – Gets the raw object response from the Twitter API scrape, there are a lot of variables in the raw object, but here’s the main attributes:
    • id_str – The id of the user
    • name – The nice name of the author account
    • screen_name – The username of the author account
    • description – The self-provided description of the author on Twitter
    • created_at – The creation date of the Twitter author account
    • profile_image_url – Link to the profile image of the Twitter author account
    • profile_image_url_https – Secure link to the profile image of the Twitter author account

stf_get_tweets($args)

This will be the main function used to get Tweets from the DB. This function takes an array of parameters as follows:

  • $args['num'] – This tells us how many Tweets to get from the DB, defaults to 5
  • $args['offset'] – This tells us how many Tweets to skip over when selecting our Tweets, defaults to 0
  • $args['retweets'] – This tells us whether or not to get Retweets, defaults to true
  • $args['replies'] – This tells us whether or not to get Replies, defaults to true
    This function returns an array of STF_Tweet objects, the use of these objects is described above

Contributors

Future Development

  • Database Functions (Delete, Rescrape)
  • Multiple Twitter Streams
  • Define the interval between feed scrapes
  • Allow users to Retweet and Reply with their own accounts right from your site
  • Add in shortcode support for recent Tweet display
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