reading twitter's rss search feed with simple xml - php

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</title>
<link>http://twitter.com/MarielaCelita/statuses/5990165590</link>
<description>RT <a href="http://twitter.com/TwittBoy">#TwittBoy</a>: <b>TwitFile</b> - Comparte tus archivos en Twitter (hasta 200Mb) <a href="http://bit.ly/xYNsM">http://bit.ly/xYNsM</a></description>
<pubDate>Mon, 23 Nov 2009 22:45:39 +0000</pubDate>
<guid>http://twitter.com/MarielaCelita/statuses/5990165590</guid>
<author>MarielaCelita#twitter.com (M.Celita Lijerón)</author>
<media:content type="image/jpg" width="48" height="48" url="http://a3.twimg.com/profile_images/537676869/orkut_normal.jpg"/>
<google:image_link>http://a3.twimg.com/profile_images/537676869/orkut_normal.jpg</google:image_link>
</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 = $key->{"title"};
echo"
<li>
<h5><a href=$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

In the code, $screenname is assigned a value but you are echoing $author.
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 = $g->{"image_link"};
echo"
<li>
<h5><a href=$link>$author</a></h5>
<p class=info><a href=$link>$title</a></p>
</li>
";
$xml = $twitter_xml;
}
This code works.

Answer 2

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 3

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 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] => Alex_Segal#twitter.com (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...