Plain Twitter badge - a server-side solution to display tweets

What is this then?

That one day, on Twitter, Phil Burns asked me about an accessible way to embed tweets in an HTML document. As all the official badges available use JavaScript and may be tricky to fix for screen readers and impossible to fix for people without JavaScript I had a go at a pure server-side solution and here we are.

Using the plain twitter badge

Using the plain twitter badge is as easy as including the PHP script and calling the plain_twitter_badge() function. The function has two optional parameters:

user

the Twitter user name

amount

the amountnumber (alright, Alison) of tweets displayed

Styling the badge

The structure of the badge makes it pretty easy to style it to your needs:

<div class="plain-twitter-badge">
  <div>
    <a href="{url}">
      <img src="{avatar}" alt="">{user name}
    </a>
  </div>
  <ul>
    <li>{tweet}</a> <span>{time ago}</span></li>
    [...]
  </ul>
</div>

Examples

Using presets

include('./plain_twitter_badge.php');
plain_twitter_badge();
          

Customized to user and amount

include('./plain_twitter_badge.php');
plain_twitter_badge('philburns',10);
          

Source

<?php
/*
 Plain twitter badge by Christian Heilmann
 Version: 1.0
 Homepage: http://isithackday.com/hacks/twitterbadge/
 Copyright (c) 2009, Christian Heilmann
 Code licensed under the BSD License:
 http://wait-till-i.com/license.txt
*/
  function plain_twitter_badge($user='codepo8',$amount=5){
    $url = 'http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q='.$user.'&rpp=30';
    $ch = curl_init(); 
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url); 
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1); 
    $output = curl_exec($ch); 
    curl_close($ch);
    $updates = simplexml_load_string($output);   
    $ident = '';
    $tweets = '';
    $count = 0;
    foreach($updates->entry as $d){
      if($count === $amount){break;}
      if($d->author->uri == 'http://twitter.com/'.$user){
        if($ident === ''){
          $url = $d->author->uri;
          $name = $d->author->name;
          $img = $d->link[1];
          $img = $img->attributes();
          $img = $img['href'];
          $ident = '<div><a href="'.$url.'"><img src="'.$img.'" alt="">'.$name.'</a></div>';
        }
      $tweets .= '<li>' . $d->content . ' <span>(' . 
                  distance_of_time_in_words(strtotime($d->published)) . 
                 ' ago)</span></li>';
      $count++;
      }
    }
    echo '<div class="plain-twitter-badge">'.$ident;
    echo '<ul >' . $tweets . '</ul></div>';
  }
  /* 
    This is part of the date helper function of symfony:
    (c) 2004-2006 Fabien Potencier 
    <fabien.potencier@symfony-project.com>
    Thanks to Dustin Whittle for pointing it out
  */
  function distance_of_time_in_words($from_time, $to_time = null, 
                                     $include_seconds = false){
    $to_time = $to_time? $to_time: time();
    $distance_in_minutes = floor(abs($to_time - $from_time) / 60);
    $distance_in_seconds = floor(abs($to_time - $from_time));
    $string = '';
    $parameters = array();
    if ($distance_in_minutes <= 1){
      if (!$include_seconds){
        $string = $distance_in_minutes == 0 ? 
        'less than a minute' : '1 minute';
      }else{
        if ($distance_in_seconds <= 5){
          $string = 'less than 5 seconds';
        }else if ($distance_in_seconds >= 6 && $distance_in_seconds <= 10){
          $string = 'less than 10 seconds';
        }else if ($distance_in_seconds >= 11 && $distance_in_seconds <= 20){
          $string = 'less than 20 seconds';
        }else if ($distance_in_seconds >= 21 && $distance_in_seconds <= 40){
          $string = 'half a minute';
        }else if ($distance_in_seconds >= 41 && $distance_in_seconds <= 59){
          $string = 'less than a minute';
        }else{
          $string = '1 minute';
        }
      }
    }
    else if ($distance_in_minutes >= 2 && $distance_in_minutes <= 44){
      $string = '%minutes% minutes';
      $parameters['%minutes%'] = $distance_in_minutes;
    }else if ($distance_in_minutes >= 45 && $distance_in_minutes <= 89){
      $string = 'about 1 hour';
    }else if ($distance_in_minutes >= 90 && $distance_in_minutes <= 1439){
      $string = 'about %hours% hours';
      $parameters['%hours%'] = round($distance_in_minutes / 60);
    }else if ($distance_in_minutes >= 1440 && $distance_in_minutes <= 2879){
      $string = '1 day';
    }else if ($distance_in_minutes >= 2880 && $distance_in_minutes <= 43199){
      $string = '%days% days';
      $parameters['%days%'] = round($distance_in_minutes / 1440);
    }else if ($distance_in_minutes >= 43200 && $distance_in_minutes <= 86399){
      $string = 'about 1 month';
    }else if ($distance_in_minutes >= 86400 && 
              $distance_in_minutes <= 525959){
      $string = '%months% months';
      $parameters['%months%'] = round($distance_in_minutes / 43200);
    }else if ($distance_in_minutes >= 525960 && 
              $distance_in_minutes <= 1051919){
      $string = 'about 1 year';
    }else{
      $string = 'over %years% years';
      $parameters['%years%'] = floor($distance_in_minutes / 525960);
    }
    return strtr($string, $parameters);
  }
?>