Setting up Twitter API, getting the last few Tweets

Question

I am completely new to using Twitter in general and have never embedded "latest tweets" on any project. I am simply trying to embed the 3-4 newest tweets on the site footer with no additional features of functionality. I have been researching how to do this for quite some time now and having some trouble.

I added the following code snippet to the project, which works quite well, however, I am not sure how to update the snippet so it uses my Twitter account instead of the one it is set up with.

    <div id="twitter_update_list">
    </div>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.json?screen_name=stackoverflow&include_rts=true&count=4&callback=twitterCallback2">
    </script>

In addition, I keep reading that the most commonly used Twitter API will stop working soon because Twitter wants people to use their own, as opposed to third party.

I am not sure how to proceed from here. I would greatly appreciate any suggestions in this regard. To recap, all I am trying to do is grab the 3-4 latest tweets from my account.

many thanks in advance!

Answer 1

So you REALLY don't want to do this client-side anymore. (Just went through numerous docs, and devs suggest to do all oAuth server-side)

What you need to do:

First: sign up on https://dev.twitter.com, and make a new application.

Second: NOTE: Your Consumer Key / Secret along with Access Token / Secret

Third: Download Twitter OAuth Library (In this case I used the PHP Library https://github.com/abraham/twitteroauth , additional libraries located here: https://dev.twitter.com/docs/twitter-libraries)

Fourth: (If using PHP) Make sure cURL is enabled if your running on a LAMP here's the command you need:

sudo apt-get install php5-curl

Fifth: Make a new PHP file and insert the following: Thanks to Tom Elliot http://www.webdevdoor.com/php/authenticating-twitter-feed-timeline-oauth/

<?php
session_start();
require_once("twitteroauth/twitteroauth/twitteroauth.php"); //Path to twitteroauth library you downloaded in step 3

$twitteruser = "twitterusername"; //user name you want to reference
$notweets = 30; //how many tweets you want to retrieve
$consumerkey = "12345"; //Noted keys from step 2
$consumersecret = "123456789"; //Noted keys from step 2
$accesstoken = "123456789"; //Noted keys from step 2
$accesstokensecret = "12345"; //Noted keys from step 2

function getConnectionWithAccessToken($cons_key, $cons_secret, $oauth_token, $oauth_token_secret) {
  $connection = new TwitterOAuth($cons_key, $cons_secret, $oauth_token, $oauth_token_secret);
  return $connection;
}

$connection = getConnectionWithAccessToken($consumerkey, $consumersecret, $accesstoken, $accesstokensecret);

$tweets = $connection->get("https://api.twitter.com/1.1/statuses/user_timeline.json?screen_name=".$twitteruser."&count=".$notweets);

echo json_encode($tweets);
echo $tweets; //testing remove for production   
?>

And boom, you're done. I know this isn't a pure js solution but again reading through the new Twitter API 1.1 docs they REALLY don't want you to do this client-side. Hope this helps!