jason white

I was using a plugin form another developer that inextricably stopped working, not sure why or how. After contacting the author and getting zero response I decided to write my own twitter widget plugin for WordPress.

 All I need are [x] number of profile pictures to display in my template sidebar, below is my crude “version 1.0″ proof of concept, I intend to update as and when I have the time. For now it works as you can see on the sidebar of this page.  a text version is available here http://www.jasonwhite.co.uk/mytwitterfollowers.txt

Features to add:

• Dynamic Twitter ScreenName
• Dynamic Display Number
• Cache, with expiry timeout in minutes or views

The Code:

<?php

/*

Plugin Name: myTwitterFollowers

Plugin URI: http://www.jasonwhite.co.uk/

Description: Adds Twitter Followesr to your sidebar

Author: Jason White

Version: 1.0

Author URI: http://www.jasonwhite.co.uk/

*/

$twittername = 'iJasonWhite';

$displayQTY = 60 ;

function myTwitterFollowers()

{

	//get twitter name

	$twittername = $GLOBALS['twittername'];

	//get number to display

	$displayQTY = $GLOBALS['displayQTY'];

	//twitter api url

	$API_URL = "http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/followers/".$twittername.".json";

	//Initialize a cURL session

	$curl = curl_init(); 

	//Set an options for a cURL transfer

	//this line sets the url to fetch

	curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_URL, $API_URL);

	//tell curl to return output as a string

	curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);

	//get the output into our variable

	$curloutstring = curl_exec($curl);

	//close out curl object

	curl_close($curl);

	//take the twitter JSON encoded response and convert it into a PHP variable.

	$response = json_decode($curloutstring, true);

	//initialize our count variable used in the following loop

	$count = 0;

	//hardcoded inline styling is BAD, don't do it!  

	echo '<div style="padding-left:12px;">';

	//lets loop each item(follower) in the response

	foreach($response as $friends){

		//check to see we are displaying only the qauntity that we want

		if ( $count == $displayQTY ) 

		{ 

			//if we are, brak the loop

			break; 

		}

		//profile data variables

		$thumbnail = $friends['profile_image_url'];

		$screenurl = $friends['screen_name'];

		$screenname = $friends['name'];

		//print out profile photo and link to twitter profile

		echo '<a target="_blank" title="'.$screenname.'" href="http://www.twitter.com/'.$screenurl.'"><img hspace="2" vspace="2" class="photo-img" src="'.$thumbnail.'" border="0" alt="'.$screenname.'" width="24" height="24" /></a>';

		//increment count

		$count++;

	} 

	//print out closing div tag

	echo "</div>";

}

function widget_myTwitterFollowers($args) {

  //make our widget a bit mor compatible with some other themes

  extract($args);

  echo $before_widget;

  echo $before_title;?>

  My Twitter Followers<?php echo $after_title;

  myTwitterFollowers();

  echo $after_widget;

}

function myTwitterFollowers_init()

{

  //regiester the sidebar widget

  register_sidebar_widget(__('myTwitterFollowers'), 'widget_myTwitterFollowers');

}

//Hook our initiater function to the wordpress plugins loaded event.

add_action("plugins_loaded", "myTwitterFollowers_init");

?>