Twitter provides a streaming API with which you can do interesting things such as listening for tweets that contain specific strings or actions a user might take (e.g. liking a tweet, following someone,...). This package makes it very easy to work with the API.
Here's a quick example:
PublicStream::create(
$accessToken,
$accessTokenSecret,
$consumerKey,
$consumerSecret
)->whenHears('@spatie_be', function(array $tweet) {
echo "We got mentioned by {$tweet['user']['screen_name']} who tweeted {$tweet['text']}";
})->startListening();
There's no polling involved. The package will keep an open https connection with Twitter, events will be delivered in real time.
Under the hood the Phirehose package is used.
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You can install the package via composer:
composer require spatie/twitter-streaming-api
In order to use this package you'll need to get some credentials from Twitter. Head over to the Application management on Twitter to create an application.
Once you've created your application, click on the Keys and access tokens
tab to retrieve your consumer_key
, consumer_secret
, access_token
and access_token_secret
.
Currently, this package works with the public stream and the user stream. Both the PublicStream
and UserStream
classes provide a startListening
function that kicks of the listening process. Unless you cancel it your PHP process will execute that function forever. No code after the function will be run.
The public stream can be used to listen for specific words that are being tweeted, receive Tweets that are being sent from specific locations or to follow one or more users tweets.
The first parameter of whenHears
must be a string or an array containing the word or words you want to listen for. The second parameter should be a callable that will be executed when one of your words is used on Twitter.
PublicStream::create(
$accessToken,
$accessTokenSecret,
$consumerKey,
$consumerSecret
)->whenHears('@spatie_be', function(array $tweet) {
echo "We got mentioned by {$tweet['user']['screen_name']} who tweeted {$tweet['text']}";
})->startListening();
The first parameter of whenFrom
must be an array containing one or more bounding boxes, each as an array of 4 element lon/lat pairs (looking like [<south-west point longitude>, <south-west point latitude>, <north-east point longitude>, <north-east point latitude>]
). The second parameter should be a callable that will be executed when a Tweet from one of your tracked locations is being sent.
Track all tweets from San Francisco or New York:
PublicStream::create(
$accessToken,
$accessTokenSecret,
$consumerKey,
$consumerSecret
)->whenFrom([
[-122.75, 36.8, -121.75, 37.8], // San Francisco
[-74, 40, -73, 41], // New York
], function(array $tweet) {
echo "{$tweet['user']['screen_name']} just tweeted {$tweet['text']} from SF or NYC";
})->startListening();
Track all tweets with a location (from all over the world):
PublicStream::create(
$accessToken,
$accessTokenSecret,
$consumerKey,
$consumerSecret
)->whenFrom([
[-180, -90, 180, 90] // Whole world
], function(array $tweet) {
echo "{$tweet['user']['screen_name']} just tweeted {$tweet['text']} with a location attached";
})->startListening();
The first parameter of whenTweets
must be a string or an array containing the Twitter user ID or IDs you wish to follow. The second parameter should be a callable that will be executed when one of your followed users tweets. Only public information relating to the Twitter user will be available.
PublicStream::create(
$accessToken,
$accessTokenSecret,
$consumerKey,
$consumerSecret
)->whenTweets('92947501', function(array $tweet) {
echo "{$tweet['user']['screen_name']} just tweeted {$tweet['text']}";
})->startListening();
In most cases your script will interacts with the Twitter streaming API as a daemon. If you want to change the filters while it is running you can pass a callable to checkFilterPredicates
. That callable will be called every ~5 seconds.
Here's an example:
PublicStream::create(
$accessToken,
$accessTokenSecret,
$consumerKey,
$consumerSecret
)->whenHears('@spatie_be', function(array $tweet) {
echo "We got mentioned by {$tweet['user']['screen_name']} who tweeted {$tweet['text']}";
})->checkFilterPredicates(function($stream) {
$trackIds = ExternalStorage::get('TwitterTrackIds');
if ($trackIds != $stream->getTrack()) {
$stream->setTrack($trackIds);
}
})->startListening();
If you run in an external script something like
ExternalStorage::set('TwitterTrackIds', ['@spatie_be', '@laravelphp'])
then the method in the example above will change the filter predicates and reconnect to the Twitter streaming API.
ExternalStorage::get/set
is just a dummy example. In real apps you'll probably use a file, in memory cache or db for this.
UserStream::create(
$accessToken,
$accessTokenSecret,
$consumerKey,
$consumerSecret
)->onEvent(function(array $event) {
if ($event['event'] === 'favorite') {
echo "Our tweet {$event['target_object']['text']} got favorited by {$event['source']['screen_name']}";
}
})->startListening();
These APIs work in realtime, so they could report a lot of activity. If you need to do some heavy work processing that activity it's best to put that work in a queue to keep your listening process fast.
Please see CHANGELOG for more information what has changed recently.
Please see CONTRIBUTING for details.
If you discover any security related issues, please email freek@spatie.be instead of using the issue tracker.
Spatie is a webdesign agency based in Antwerp, Belgium. You'll find an overview of all our open source projects on our website.
The MIT License (MIT). Please see License File for more information.