Twitter API: Get my latest post with php

Question

I'm trying to make a simple site that uses php and the Twitter API to write out my latest post from twitter. I found a tutorial showing me how to get my timeline (or last 20 posts) in xml format, but can't figure out how to print out just the latest post, and just the text of it (not the time, date, etc that come with the xml/rss/etc).

My code looks like this

<h2 id = "latest">

    <?php
        var $username='myusername';  
        var $password='mypassword'; 
        var $responseInfo=array();

        function latest_status($format='json',$id=null) {
            $request = 'http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline.'.$format;
            if($id) {
                $postargs = "id=$id";
                return $this->process($request,$postargs);
            }
            return $this->process($request);
        }

        echo latest_status("json");
    ?>
</h2>

And it's returning this:

[{"contributors":null,"created_at":"Tue Feb 16 19:56:08 +0000 2010","in_reply_to_user_id":null,"source":"API","favorited":false,"in_reply_to_status_id":null,"truncated":false,"user":{"notifications":null,"profile_link_color":"0000ff","description":"","verified":false,"profile_background_tile":false,"created_at":"Tue Feb 16 01:16:15 +0000 2010","profile_background_color":"9ae4e8","profile_image_url":"http://s.twimg.com/a/1265999168/images/default_profile_1_normal.png","time_zone":"Hawaii","profile_sidebar_fill_color":"e0ff92","followers_count":0,"screen_name":"whisperingweb","lang":"en","friends_count":0,"profile_sidebar_border_color":"87bc44","statuses_count":2,"following":null,"protected":false,"favourites_count":1,"location":"","name":"Chris Armstrong","contributors_enabled":false,"profile_text_color":"000000","id":114608397,"geo_enabled":true,"profile_background_image_url":"http://s.twimg.com/a/1265999168/images/themes/theme1/bg.png","utc_offset":-36000,"url":null},"in_reply_to_screen_name":null,"geo":null,"id":9199090048,"text":"Someone was on your website"},{"favorited":false,"source":"web","in_reply_to_user_id":null,"created_at":"Tue Feb 16 18:50:21 +0000 2010","geo":null,"user":{"verified":false,"description":"","notifications":false,"profile_text_color":"000000","screen_name":"whisperingweb","profile_background_image_url":"http://s.twimg.com/a/1265999168/images/themes/theme1/bg.png","url":null,"profile_link_color":"0000ff","followers_count":0,"statuses_count":2,"profile_background_tile":false,"created_at":"Tue Feb 16 01:16:15 +0000 2010","friends_count":0,"profile_background_color":"9ae4e8","contributors_enabled":false,"time_zone":"Hawaii","favourites_count":0,"profile_sidebar_fill_color":"e0ff92","protected":false,"location":"","name":"Chris Armstrong","lang":"en","geo_enabled":true,"profile_sidebar_border_color":"87bc44","id":114608397,"following":false,"utc_offset":-36000,"profile_image_url":"http://s.twimg.com/a/1265999168/images/default_profile_1_normal.png"},"contributors":null,"in_reply_to_status_id":null,"id":9196705546,"in_reply_to_screen_name":null,"truncated":false,"text":"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"}]

I'm pretty new to php, and completely new to the Twitter API, so would appreciate any help or advice.

edit: Have changed example from xml to json

Answer 1

Use format='json' instead: json_decode($response)[0]['text'].

In this case, use JSON because it has a much more natural mapping to PHP's internal datatypes, which makes it dead-easy to extract the content you want. You can still use XML, but you have to iterate over the resulting structure, which is relatively complex.

Answer 2

That's just your webbrowser displaying the contents of the xml file without tags. You'd need to use an xml library (e.g. simplexml, http://php.net/manual/en/book.simplexml.php) to get the informations you want.

edit to reflect OP change

Use the json_decode method (see http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.json-decode.php). The output can be accessed like an array.

For further questions, also, please use the documentation of PHP and google (I got the information about json by googleing "json in php").