Twitter API: Up and Running

Chapter 6. Application Setup

kmakice Get ready to run your applications by putting all the parts on the server. Don’t forget to stretch.

Back in Chapter 2, I introduced you to some examples of existing web applications using the Twitter API. Now it’s time to see what you might find under the hood of those tools by building one of your own.

The Twitter community is very generous with the code it generates. A number of premade libraries help simplify interaction between the Twitter API and a variety of languages. For PHP, there are several options that will let you download some code and access the API with fewer lines of code than programming it from scratch. Some of these libraries include:

Arc90_Service_Twitter, by Matt Williams

http://lab.arc90.com/2008/06/php_twitter_api_client.php

PEAR Services_Twitter, by Joe Stump and David Jean Louis

http://pear.php.net/package/Services_Twitter/

PHP Twitter, by Tijs Verkoyen

http://classes.verkoyen.eu/twitter/

TwitterLibPHP, by Justin Poliey

http://github.com/jdp/twitterlibphp/

PHP Twitter, by David Billingham and Aaron Brazell

http://emmense.com/php-twitter/

Other programming languages with similar libraries include ActionScript/Flash, C++, C#/.NET, Java, Objective-C/Cocoa, Perl, PL/SQL, Python, and Ruby. Visit the Twitter API wiki for links to other libraries that you can download and use in your code.

Note

If you have questions about programming for Twitter, ...