PHP - Twitter API (OAuth) with pagination not working properly

Question

I have integrated Twitter API (Twitter OAuth) to get latest feeds of particular company account and here below is my code what I have done so far (https://tomelliott.com/php/authenticating-twitter-feed-timeline-oauth).

<?php 
require_once("twitteroauth/twitteroauth.php"); //Path to twitteroauth library

$twitteruser = "CompanyName";
$notweets = 3;
$consumerkey = "xxxxxxxx";
$consumersecret = "xxxxxxxx";
$accesstoken = "xxxxxxxx";
$accesstokensecret = "xxxxxxxx";

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);


?>


                                <?php foreach ($tweets as $current_tweet) { ?>
                                    <div class="card">
                                        <div class="card-body">
                                            <div class="media">

                                                <div class="media-body">
                                                    <h5 class="F-20 themeFontGrey MontSemBold text-uppercase">REGENCY CORPORATE</h5>
                                                    <p class="MontRegular themeFontGrey">
                                                        <?php 
                                                        $date = $current_tweet->created_at;

                                                        echo date("F d Y,  H:i A", strtotime($date));
                                                        ?>
                                                    </p>
                                                </div>
                                                <?php 
                                                $twitt_url = '#';
                                                $twitter_target = '';
                                                if (!empty($current_tweet->id)) {
                                                    $twitt_url = 'https://twitter.com/' . $twitteruser . '/status/' . $current_tweet->id;
                                                    $twitter_target = 'target="_blank"';
                                                }
                                                ?>
                                                <a href="<?php echo $twitt_url; ?>" class="hovicon effect-5 news-icon" <?php echo $twitter_target; ?> >
                                                    <i class="fa fa-twitter"></i>
                                                </a>
                                            </div>
                                            <p class="MontRegular themeFontGrey">
                                                <?php echo $current_tweet->text; ?>
                                            </p>

                                        </div>

                                        <?php if (!empty($current_tweet->entities->media[0]->media_url)) { ?>
                                        <div class="newsImages">
                                            <img src="<?php echo $current_tweet->entities->media[0]->media_url; ?>" alt="Images" height="20%" width="20%" />
                                        </div>

                                        <?php 
                                    } ?>
                                        <hr />
                                    </div>
                                <?php 
                            } ?>

This works well, I am getting 3 latest tweets. Now I want to add pagination into this, hence I followed documentation provided by Twitter (https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/basics/cursoring.html), and below is my updated code with cursor for the same and I printed the array (response).

<?php 
require_once("twitteroauth/twitteroauth.php"); //Path to twitteroauth library

$twitteruser = "CompanyName";
$notweets = 3;
$cursor = -1;

$consumerkey = "xxxxxxxx";
$consumersecret = "xxxxxxxx";
$accesstoken = "xxxxxxxx";
$accesstokensecret = "xxxxxxxx";

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 . "&cursor=" . $cursor);
echo '<pre>';
print_r($tweets);
exit;
?>

As you can see, here I have added $cursor = -1; and updated my api target url to $tweets = $connection->get("https://api.twitter.com/1.1/statuses/user_timeline.json?screen_name=" . $twitteruser . "&count=" . $notweets . "&cursor=" . $cursor);, passing cursor value.

Here I am getting the 3 recent tweets, however, as per mentioned in documentation from above link (https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/basics/cursoring.html), you should get response like below.

{
    "ids": [
        385752029,
        602890434,
        ...
        333181469,
        333165023
    ],
    "next_cursor": 1374004777531007833,
    "next_cursor_str": "1374004777531007833",
    "previous_cursor": 0,
    "previous_cursor_str": "0"
}

I have also tried to update requested feed url to this.

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

But I am not getting any keys like next_cursor in any ways so far to be able to proceed. Can someone guide me, what I am doing wrong here, and what should I do to enable pagination from here on?

Any help or suggestion will be highly appreciated.

Thanks

Answer 1

Refer Link :: Github :: https://github.com/dineshghule321/codebird-php

Use Codebird to connect to the Twitter REST API, Streaming API, Collections API, TON (Object Nest) API and Twitter Ads API from your PHP code — all using just one library. Codebird supports full 3-way OAuth as well as application-only auth.

Answer 2

The standard paging approaches are not suitable for methods like GET statuses/user_timeline due to the Twitter's realtime nature.

https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/tweets/timelines/guides/working-with-timelines

The cursoring as you have requested only applies if you need to retrieve a very large data instead of retrieving all at once for some methods such as GET friends/ids in which you can send the cursor as a parameter. In other words the method needs to support the cursor as a parameter.

https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/accounts-and-users/follow-search-get-users/api-reference/get-friends-ids

Answer 3

OK Guys,

I have found my own way to solve this to integrate ajax pagination using my same library which I have already used. Here is the way what I have done.

I have created two pages. One to send ajax request to grab data in results (page1.php), second page is to fetch api and based on ajax request (twitter_posts_ajax.php).

page1.php

<div class="col-xs-12 twitter_posts">
</div>

<script>

$( document ).ready(function() {

      $.ajax({
            type: 'POST',
            url: "twitter_posts_ajax.php",      
            dataType: "html",
                success: function(resultData) { 
                console.log(resultData);
                    $( ".twitter_posts" ).html(resultData);
                }
            });


             $(document).on('click', '.twitter_posts_anchor', function(){

        var twitterpagenumber = $(this).data('twitterpagenumber');
        var myKeyVals = { twitterInpage : twitterpagenumber}

        $.ajax({
        type: 'POST',
        url: "twitter_posts_ajax.php",
        data: myKeyVals,
        dataType: "html",
            success: function(resultData) { 
                console.log(resultData);
                $( ".twitter_posts" ).html(resultData);

                $('html, body').animate({
                        scrollTop: $( '.twitter_posts' ).offset().top
                    }, 500);

            }
        });

    });
});

twitter_posts_ajax.php

<?php 
session_start();
require_once("twitteroauth/twitteroauth.php"); //Path to twitteroauth library

$twitteruser = "CompanyName";
$limit = 10; //per page    


$consumerkey = "xxxxxxxx";
$consumersecret = "xxxxxxxx";
$accesstoken = "xxxxxxxx";
$accesstokensecret = "xxxxxxxx";

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);

if (!isset($_SESSION['twitter_total_pages'])) {
    // Counting all tweets first 
    $count_all_tweets = $connection->get("https://api.twitter.com/1.1/statuses/user_timeline.json?screen_name=" . $twitteruser);
    $twitter_total_pages = ceil(count($count_all_tweets) / $limit);
    $_SESSION['twitter_total_pages'] = $twitter_total_pages;
} else {
    $twitter_total_pages = $_SESSION['twitter_total_pages'];
}





$twitterInpage = !empty($_POST['twitterInpage']) ? (int)$_POST['twitterInpage'] : 1;


$totalPages = $_SESSION['twitter_total_pages']; //calculate total pages
$twitterInpage = max($twitterInpage, 1); //get 1 page when $_GET['page'] <= 0
$twitterInpage = min($twitterInpage, $totalPages); //get last page when $_GET['page'] > $totalPages
$offset = ($twitterInpage - 1) * $limit;

if ($offset < 0) $offset = 0;



$link = '?twitterInpage=%d';
$pagerContainer = '<div style="width: 300px;" class="linkedin_pagination">';
if ($totalPages != 0) {
    if ($twitterInpage == 1) {
        $pagerContainer .= '';
    } else {


        $page_number = $twitterInpage - 1;
        $pagerContainer .= sprintf('<a href="javascript:void(0)" style="color: #c00" class="twitter_posts_anchor" data-twitterpagenumber=' . $page_number . '> &#171; prev page</a>');
    }
    $pagerContainer .= ' <span> page <strong>' . $twitterInpage . '</strong> from ' . $totalPages . '</span>';
    if ($twitterInpage == $totalPages) {
        $pagerContainer .= '';
    } else {
        $page_number = $twitterInpage + 1;
        $pagerContainer .= sprintf('<a href="javascript:void(0)" style="color: #c00" class="twitter_posts_anchor" data-twitterpagenumber=' . $page_number . '> next page &#187; </a>');

    }
}
$pagerContainer .= '</div>';



if ($twitterInpage == $_SESSION['twitter_total_pages']) {
    $twitter_page_number = $_SESSION['twitter_total_pages'];
} else {
    $twitter_page_number = ($page_number - 1);
}

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


                                <?php foreach ($tweets as $current_tweet) { ?>
                                    <div class="card">
                                        <div class="card-body">
                                            <div class="media">
                                                <div class="newsIcon">
                                                    <img src="img/theme-logo-icon.png" alt="logo" />
                                                </div>
                                                <div class="media-body">
                                                    <h5 class="F-20 themeFontGrey MontSemBold text-uppercase">REGENCY CORPORATE</h5>
                                                    <p class="MontRegular themeFontGrey">
                                                        <?php 
                                                        $date = $current_tweet->created_at;                                                        
                                                        echo date("F d Y,  H:i A", strtotime($date));
                                                        ?>
                                                    </p>
                                                </div>
                                                <?php 
                                                $twitt_url = '#';
                                                $twitter_target = '';
                                                if (!empty($current_tweet->id)) {
                                                    $twitt_url = 'https://twitter.com/' . $twitteruser . '/status/' . $current_tweet->id;
                                                    $twitter_target = 'target="_blank"';
                                                }
                                                ?>
                                                <a href="<?php echo $twitt_url; ?>" class="hovicon effect-5 news-icon" <?php echo $twitter_target; ?> >
                                                    <i class="fa fa-twitter"></i>
                                                </a>
                                            </div>
                                            <p class="MontRegular themeFontGrey">
                                                <?php echo $current_tweet->text; ?>
                                            </p>

                                        </div>

                                        <?php if (!empty($current_tweet->entities->media[0]->media_url)) { ?>
                                        <div class="newsImages">
                                            <img src="<?php echo $current_tweet->entities->media[0]->media_url; ?>" alt="Images" />
                                        </div>
                                        <?php 
                                    } ?>

                                    </div>
                                <?php 
                            } ?>
<?php echo $pagerContainer; ?>

Here, as you can see, we have two pages, page1.php through which I am passing ajax request to load data from twitter_posts_ajax.php.

I have also used session_start() in twitter_posts_ajax.php to grab total number of tweets only once so that I do not need to recount every time. I have also used offset and limit for my pagination which works well with ajax.

Hope this helps.