reading twitter's rss search feed with simple xml

Question

Having some trouble selecting some nodes in the rss feed for twitter's search

the rss url is here

http://search.twitter.com/search.rss?q=twitfile

each item looks like this

<item>
  <title>RT @TwittBoy: TwitFile - Comparte tus archivos en Twitter (hasta 200Mb) http://bit.ly/xYNsM&lt;/title&gt;
  <link>http://twitter.com/MarielaCelita/statuses/5990165590&lt;/link&gt;
  <description>RT &lt;a href=&quot;http://twitter.com/TwittBoy&amp;quot;&amp;gt;@TwittBoy&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;: &lt;b&gt;TwitFile&lt;/b&gt; - Comparte tus archivos en Twitter (hasta 200Mb) &lt;a href=&quot;http://bit.ly/xYNsM&amp;quot;&amp;gt;http://bit.ly/xYNsM&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&lt;/description&gt;
  <pubDate>Mon, 23 Nov 2009 22:45:39 +0000</pubDate>
  <guid>http://twitter.com/MarielaCelita/statuses/5990165590&lt;/guid&gt;
  <author>[email protected] (M.Celita Lijer&#243;n)</author>
  <media:content type="image/jpg" width="48" height="48" url="http://a3.twimg.com/profile_images/537676869/orkut_normal.jpg"/&gt;
  <google:image_link>http://a3.twimg.com/profile_images/537676869/orkut_normal.jpg&lt;/google:image_link&gt;
</item>

My php is below

  foreach ($twitter_xml->channel->item as $key) {
$screenname = $key->{"author"};
$date = $key->{"pubDate"};
$profimg = $key->{"google:image_link"};
$link = $key->{"link"};
$title = $key->{"title"};
echo"
                        <li>
                        <a href=$link><img width=48 height=48 src=\"$profimg\"></a>
                        <h5><a href=$link>$author</a></h5>
                        <p class=info><a href=$link>$title</a></p>
                        </li>
";

Problem is nothing is being echoed, i mean from the rss feed, if there are 20 results, its looping 20 times, just no data

Answer 1

Set error_reporting(E_ALL); and you'll see that $author isn't defined.

You can't access <google:image_link/> this way, you'll have to use XPath or children()

$key->children("google", true)->image_link;

If you use SimpleDOM, there's a shortcut that returns the first element of an XPath result:

$key->firstOf("google:image_link");

Answer 2

if (!$xml = simplexml_load_file('http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q='.urlencode      ($terms)))
    {
       throw new RuntimeException('Unable to load or parse search results feed');
    }
    if (!count($entries = $xml->entry))
    {
        throw new RuntimeException('No entry found');
    }
    for($i=0;$i<count($entries);$i++)
    {
       $title[$i] = $entries[$i]->title;
        //etc.. continue description,,,,,

    }

Answer 3

1. In the code, $screenname is assigned a value but you are echoing $author.
2. To get elements within namespaces like google:image_link ,you will have to do this:

$g = $key->children("http://base.google.com/ns/1.0"); $profimg = $g->{"image_link"};

If you are wondering where did I get "http://base.google.com/ns/1.0" from, the namespace is mentioned in the second line of the rss feed.

$url="http://search.twitter.com/search.rss?q=twitfile";
$twitter_xml = simplexml_load_file($url); 

foreach ($twitter_xml->channel->item as $key) {
    $author = $key->{"author"};
    $date = $key->{"pubDate"};
    $link = $key->{"link"};
    $title = $key->{"title"};
    $g = $key->children("http://base.google.com/ns/1.0"); 
    $profimg = $g->{"image_link"};
    echo"
          <li>
          <a href=$link><img width=48 height=48 src=\"$profimg\"></a>
          <h5><a href=$link>$author</a></h5>
          <p class=info><a href=$link>$title</a></p>
          </li>
    ";
    $xml = $twitter_xml;
}

This code works.

Answer 4

I made this and it works :)) $sea_name is the keyword your looking for...

<?php
function twitter_feed( $sea_name ){
    $endpoint = 'http://search.twitter.com/search.rss?q='.urlencode($sea_name);  // URL to call
    $resp = simplexml_load_file($endpoint);

    // Check to see if the response was loaded, else print an error
     if ($resp) {
     $results = '';
     $counter=0;
     // If the response was loaded, parse it and build links  
     foreach($resp->channel->item as $item) {
      //var_dump($item);
      preg_match("/\((.*?)\)/", $item->author, $blah);
      $content = $item->children("http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" );
                        $imageUrl = getXmlAttribute( $content, "url" );
      echo '
      <div class="twitter-item">
       <img src="'.$imageUrl.'" />
       <span class="twit">'.$blah[1].'</span><br />
       <span class="twit-content">'.$item->title.'</span>
       <br style="clear:both; line-height:0;margin:0;padding:0;">
      </div>';
      $counter++;
     }
    }
    // If there was no response, print an error
    else {
     $results = "Oops! Must not have gotten the response!";
    }
    echo $results;
}

function getXmlAttribute( SimpleXMLElement $xmlElement, $attribute ) {
    foreach( $xmlElement->attributes() as $name => $value ) {
        if( $name == $attribute ) {
        return (string)$value;
        }
    }
}
?>

The object will contain somthing like:

<!-- SimpleXMLElement Object
(
    [title] => Before I go to bed, I just want to say I've just seen Peter Kay's CIN cartoon video for the 1st time... one word... WOW.
    [link] => http://twitter.com/Alex_Segal/statuses/5993710015
    [description] => Before I go to bed, I just want to say I&apos;ve just seen <b>Peter</b> <b>Kay</b>&apos;s CIN cartoon video for the 1st time... one word... WOW.
    [pubDate] => Tue, 24 Nov 2009 01:00:00 +0000
    [guid] => http://twitter.com/Alex_Segal/statuses/5993710015
    [author] => [email protected] (Alex Segal)
)
 -->

You can use any of it inside the foreach look and echo them such as $item->author, $item->link, etc....any other attributes you can use the getattribute function...