Problems with Twitter API 1.1 - application-only authentication response with PHP - php

Question

I'm trying to retrieve data from Twitter by connecting to twitter API and make some requests the my code below but I get nothing in return... I just requested the bearer token and successfully received it.
This is the code in PHP:
$url = "https://api.twitter.com/1.1/statuses/user_timeline.json?
count=10&screen_name=twitterapi";
$headers = array(
"GET".$url." HTTP/1.1",
"Host: api.twitter.com",
"User-Agent: My Twitter App v1.0.23",
"Authorization: Bearer ".$bearer_token."",
"Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded;charset=UTF-8",
);
$ch = curl_init(); // setup a curl
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL,$url); // set url to send to
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $headers); // set custom headers
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true); // return output
$retrievedhtml = curl_exec ($ch); // execute the curl
print_r($retrievedhtml);
when using the print_r nothing is shown at all and when using the var_dump i find "bool(false)"
Any idea with what could be wrong with this?
Regards,

Answer 1

Try outputting any potential cURL errors with
curl_error($ch);
after the curl_exec command. That might give you a clue about what's going wrong. Completely empty responses usually point to something going wrong with the cURL operation itself.

Answer 2

Your headers are wrong... do not include
"GET".$url." HTTP/1.1"
in your headers.
Further, you may print out the HTTP return code by
$info = curl_getinfo($ch);
echo $info["http_code"];
200 is success, anything in the 4xx or 5xx range means something went wrong.

Answer 3

I built based on comments I found in a Twitter dev discussion by #kiers. Hope this helps!
<?php
// Get Token
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_URL, 'https://api.twitter.com/oauth2/token');
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_POST, true);
$data = array();
$data['grant_type'] = "client_credentials";
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $data);
$screen_name = 'ScreenName'; // add screen name here
$count = 'HowManyTweets'; // add number of tweets here
$consumerKey = 'EnterYourTwitterAppKey'; //add your app key
$consumerSecret = 'EnterYourTwitterAppSecret'; //add your app secret
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_USERPWD, $consumerKey . ':' . $consumerSecret);
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
$result = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
$bearer_token = json_decode($result);
$bearer = $bearer_token->{'access_token'}; // this is your app token
// Get Tweets
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_URL, 'https://api.twitter.com/1.1/statuses/user_timeline.json?count='.$count.'&screen_name='.$screen_name);
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER,array('Authorization: Bearer ' . $bearer));
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
$result = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
$cleanresults = json_decode($result);
// Release the Kraken!
echo '<ul id="twitter_update_list">';
foreach ( $cleanresults as $tweet ) {
// Set up some variables
$tweet_url = 'http://twitter.com/'.$screen_name.'/statuses/'.$tweet->id_str; // tweet url
$urls = $tweet->entities->urls; // links
$retweet = $tweet->retweeted_status->user->screen_name; // there is a retweeted user
$time = new DateTime($tweet->created_at); // lets grab the date
$date = date_format($time, 'M j, g:ia'); // and format it accordingly
$url_find = array();
$url_links = array();
if ( $urls ) {
if ( !is_array( $urls ) ) {
$urls = array();
}
foreach ( $urls as $url ) {
$theurl = $url->url;
if ( $theurl ) {
$url_block = ''.$theurl.'';
$url_find[] = $theurl; // make array of urls
$url_links[] = $url_block; // make array of replacement link blocks for urls in text
}
}
}
if ( $retweet ) { // add a class for retweets
$link_class = ' class="retweet"';
} else {
$link_class = '';
}
echo '<li'.$link_class.'>';
$new_text = preg_replace('##([\\d\\w]+)#', '$0', $tweet->text); // replace all #mentions with actual links
$newer_text = preg_replace('/#([\\d\\w]+)/', '$0', $new_text); // replace all #tags with actual links
$text = str_replace( $url_find, $url_links, $newer_text); // replace all links with actual links
echo $text;
echo '<br /><a class="twt-date" href="'.$tweet_url.'" target="_blank">'.$date.'</a>'; // format the date above
echo '</li>';
}
echo '</ul>';
I put together some files on github, named "Flip the Bird." Hope this helps...

Answer 4

I created PHP library supporting application-only authentication and single-user OAuth. https://github.com/vojant/Twitter-php.
Usage
$twitter = new \TwitterPhp\RestApi($consumerKey,$consumerSecret);
$connection = $twitter->connectAsApplication();
$data = $connection->get('/statuses/user_timeline',array('screen_name' => 'TechCrunch'));