ExpressionEngine Twitter
ExpressionEngine Twitter is nearly an identical port of EllisLabs Twitter Timeline plugin, via Bryant Hughes's TGL_Twitter. However ExpressionEngine Twitter has a CP Backend, allowing a user to authenticate with Twitter using oAuth.
ExpressionEngine Twitter uses the Twitter 1.1 API, and provides tags that make it possible to conform to Twitter's Display Requirements.
A note about support
While we have incentive to keep this project working because we use it frequently, we are not always available to provide support for the EE Twitter plugin. We therefore offer it to you, free of charge, but with no guarantee of support. Find something that's not working? Or could be improved? By all means, fix it! Submit a pull request, and we'll pull it into the project so everyone can benefit. But please, no hard feelings if we can't help you when it's not working. Go forth and Open Source.
Requirements
- EE 2.0
- Twitter Account
- PHP 5 >= 5.3
Installation
- Add-ons -> Modules -> Twitter -> Install
- Login to https://apps.twitter.com/ Note: This does not have to be the account you are going to authorize with, or the account you are going to be displaying tweets for. It is just the account that "owns" the application (your site).
- Click the "Create New App" button.
- Fill out the Create an Application form. You do not need to enter a Callback URL.
- Click on the "API Keys" tab.
- Copy the API Key and API Secret, and paste them into the EE_Twitter settings form in your ExpressionEngine control panel. Click "Update".
- Click "Generate new Request Token".
- Follow on-page instructions to get PIN number, and update form with PIN.
Template Tags
User
{exp:twitter:user screen_name="biz" limit="5"}
{/exp:twitter:user}
Parameters
screen_name
The screen name of the person whose tweets you want to retrieve. This should not include the leading @ sign. Required.
limit
The maximum number of tweets to display. Defaults to whatever 20.
count
The number of tweets to retrieve. Defaults to 15
twitter_refresh
The time, in minutes, between calls to Twitter. Between these times, the tag will use the cached value. Defaults to 45.
retweets
Include retweets in retrieved tweets. Options yes, no. Defaults to yes
replies
Include @ replies in retrieved tweets. Options yes, no. Defaults to yes
target
Set the target for all links inside the tweets.
prefix
Set a prefix to use for the tags. This turns {id} into {yourprefix:id}. Defaults to no prefix.
userprefix
Set a prefix to use for the user tags ({name}, {screen_name}, {location}, {description}, {profile_image_url}). Defaults to what prefix is set to.
images_only
Only return tweets that contain images. Options yes, no. Defaults to no
When this is set to yes, urls to images in the tweet will also be removed from the tweet text.
links_only
Only return tweets that contain links. Options yes, no. Defaults to no
####Single Variable Tags
Dates: {twitter_relative_date}, {better_relative_date}, {iso_date}, {created_at}
{twitter_relative_date} returns a string that conforms to Twitter Display Requirements. This will a relative date when the tweet occurred less than a day ago (eg "13h" or "29m"), or the date when the tweet occurred more than a day ago (eg "21 Apr 12").
Note: {twitter_relative_date} requires PHP 5.3 or above. On PHP 5.2 and before, you will always get a full date string, like '4 Apr 85'.
{better_relative_date} returns a more readable relative date string. Stylistically, it more closely matches relative date conventions found on sites like GitHub and StackOverflow. And probably some other InterCaps out there.
{iso_date} returns the date in ISO8601 format. {created_at} returns a date that can be formatted with ExpressionEngine's standard format= parameter for dates.
URLs: {permalink}, {reply_intent}, {retweet_intent}, {favorite_intent}
{permalink} returns the permanent Twitter URL. {reply_intent} includes a URL formatted for the Reply Intent. {retweet_intent} includes a URL formatted for the Retweet Intent. {favorite_intent} includes a URL formatted for the Reply Intent. See Twitter's Display Requirements and Web Intents documentation.
{id}
The tweet's ID.
{text}
The text of the tweet, including HTML markup for mentions, links, and hashtags.
{name}
The name of the person who created the tweet.
{screen_name}
The screen name of the person who created the tweet. This does not include the leading "@".
{location}
The location of the person who created the tweet, according to their profile.
{description}
The description of the person who created the tweet, according to their profile.
{profile_image_url}
The profile image of the person who created the tweet, using the HTTP protocol.
{profile_image_url_https}, {image}
The profile image of the person who created the tweet, using the HTTPS protocol.
{profile_image_url:mini}, {profile_image_url:bigger}, {profile_image_url:original}
The standard profile image is 48px by 48px. You can also use other size variations:
- mini: 24px by 24px
- bigger: 73px by 73px
- original: [the dimensions of the originally uploaded image]
Those same tag extensions will also work on the secure and retweeted image variants, e.g. {image:bigger}, {retweeter:profile_image_url_https:mini}
Retweets: {if retweeted}, {retweeter}
If the tweet is a retweet, the original tweet will be shown. Use {if retweet} to determine if the tweet being shown is a retweet. {retweeter} will then include the name of the person that retweeted the tweet.
Also, {retweeter:*} exists for all user fields for the retweeter, so for example {retweeter:profile_image_url_https} will be the profile image of the retweeter.
Variable Pairs
Images: {images} Contains all images from the tweet.
{image}
The direct url to the image. This is essentially the same as {medium}, though the URL is slightly different.
{display_url}
Url to the display page of twitpic
{[size]}
The url to the image at [size]. Twitter crops images at four different sizes: large, medium, small, and thumb. See Tweet Entities | Twitter Developers for more information. Example: {large}.
{[size]_https}
The url to the image at [size], using HTTPS. Example: {large_https}.
{[size]_w}
The width of the image at [size]. Example: {large_w}.
{[size]_h}
The height of the image at [size]. Example: {large_h}.
{[size]_resize}
How Twitter resized the media to the particular [size]. Value can be either "crop" or "fit". Example: {large_resize}.
List
{exp:twitter:get_list screen_name="twitter" list="engineering"}
{/exp:twitter:get_list}
Why didn't we just name this list, you ask? PHP has list reserved, so we
can't create a method on the module with the name list. Therefore, we needed
a different name. After much scientific research, we came up with get_list.
Sorry.
Parameters
screen_name
The username of the user that owns the list. Required.
list
The name of the list. Required.
All other parameters are the same as {exp:twitter:user}
Single Variable Tags
All variables are the same as {exp:twitter:user}
Search
{exp:twitter:search query="#twitter" limit="5"}
{/exp:twitter:search}
Parameters
query
The query to use to search Twitter. Required.
All other parameters are the same as {exp:twitter:user}
Single Variable Tags
All variables are the same as {exp:twitter:user}
Script
{exp:twitter:script}
Outputs the standard Twitter platform script:
<script type="text/javascript" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
Known Issues
Please take note that on some API calls, such as user timeline, if the API does not detect a valid oAuth token it will just default to the unauthenticated API conditions. An example of this is if you install the module, then add in your template tags without authenticating first, data will still be shown. However, this data will be rate limited to 150 and is returned based on unauthenticated API conditions.