Storm Twitter Feed for WordPress

A Twitter API 1.1 compliant wordpress plugin that provides an array of a users timeline from Twitter for use by theme developers.

The new Twitter API requires you be oAuth'd before you can request a list of tweets, this means that all of the existing Twitter plugins that simply make an AJAX request for to the JSON API endpoint will break as of March 2013.

This is a major problem for the vast majority of websites that are currently using twitter, so we built a PHP class that implements all the new requirements for authentication and gives you an array of tweets out of the other end, for you to use in your PHP applications, or WordPress theme. You can find the stand-alone StormTwitter class on GitHub

This plugin wraps our Twitter class and provides a settings screen for easy integration into WordPress. However, it's definitely for developers - you only get a PHP array out of it that contains Twitter tweet objects. You'll still need to style the output and make it comply with the new display requirements.

This plugin does not provide sidebar widgets, shortcodes or any other form of drop-in functionality. You still need to do the styling, we've just done the heavy lifting for you!

Installation

Install the plugin using the plugin manager, or upload the files to your wp-content/plugins directory.

Navigate to the Settings > Twitter Feed Auth.

Here you'll find settings fields to authenticate with Twitter. You'll need to create a new Application on http://dev.twitter.com/apps.

Once you've create the app, scroll down the app's details page to find the oAuth section. Copy the consumer secret and consumer key into the settings page for the plugin. Then click the Create Access Token button at the bottom of the Twitter app page. Copy the Access token and Access token secret into the plugin's settings page. Finally, enter the Twitter username of the feed you want to access. Save the settings.

Now, anywhere in your theme files you can call the getTweets() function to retrieve an array of tweets.

You can then loop over the array and do whatever you want with it.

`<?php
  $tweets = getTweets($number_of_tweets, $twitter_screenname_to_load, $optional_array_of_any_additional_twitter_api_parameters);
  var_dump($tweets);

  foreach($tweets as $tweet){
    var_dump($tweet);
  }
?>`

You can specify a number of tweets to return (up to 20) by passing a parameter to the function. For example, to display just the latest tweet you'd request getTweets(1)

The following default options are used unless you override them in the optional array of additional parameters.

Trim the user object ("trim_user" => true)
Exclude replies ("exclude_replies" => true)
Exclude retweets ("include_rts" => false)

Results are cached for 1 hour (by default) to help you avoid hitting the API limits.

Output

As we said, this plugin does not provide sidebar widgets, shortcodes or any other form of drop-in functionality. Here's some example code for outputting the tweets in HTML:

https://github.com/stormuk/storm-twitter-for-wordpress/wiki/Example-code-to-layout-tweets

Credits

Uses Abraham Williams's Twitter OAuth class.

About

Version: 2.0.3

Written by Liam Gladdy of Storm Consultancy - http://www.stormconsultancy.co.uk

Storm Consultancy are a web design and development agency based in Bath, UK.

If you are looking for a Bath WordPress Developer, then get in touch!

License

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.