Enhancing Dynamic Twitter Signature Images with PHP (
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In my last article we began putting together a solution that will allow us to display dynamic Twitter signature images in forum posts and emails. In this article we’ll continue where we left off by adding the functions that will harness the power of GD to create the actual image.Before we get too involved, let’s take a moment to look at the code that we’ve built so far.
class SignatureImage
{
private $screen_name;
private $profile_image;
private $status_text;
private $local_avatar;
public function __construct($name, $bg_image, $adir)
{
$this->fetchUserInfo(strtolower($name));
$this->fetchAvatar($this->profile_image, $adir);
}
private function fetchUserInfo($name)
{
$url = "http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/{$name}.xml?count=1";
$xml = $this->curlRequest($url);
if ($xml === false) {
// User feed unavailable.
}
$statuses = new SimpleXMLElement($xml);
if (!$statuses || !$statuses->status) {
// Invalid user channel.
}
foreach ($statuses->status as $status) {
$this->status_text = (string) $status->text;
$this->profile_image = (string) $status->user->profile_image_url;
$this->screen_name = (string) $status->user->screen_name;
break;
}
}
private function curlRequest($url)
{
if (!extension_loaded('curl')) {
// PHP extension CURL is not loaded.
}
$curl = curl_init($url);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_HEADER, false);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
$result = curl_exec($curl);
if (curl_errno($curl) !== 0 || curl_getinfo($curl, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE) !== 200) {
$result === false;
}
curl_close($curl);
return $result;
}
private function fetchAvatar($url, $adir)
{
$fname = end(explode('/', $url));
$adir = preg_match('#^(.*?)/$#i', $url) ? $adir : "{$adir}/";
$fname = $adir . $fname;
if ( !file_exists($fname) ) {
$img = $this->curlRequest($url);
$fp = fopen($fname, 'w');
fwrite($fp, $img);
fclose($fp);
}
$this->local_avatar = $fname;
}
}
The code we have so far will accept a user name and retrieve the XML status feed using the Twitter API. Then it parses that information, assigns some class-level variables, and creates a local copy of the user’s Twitter avatar. Now we need to assemble these pieces into a single “signature” image. To do that we’ll create a function called renderImage. So let’s go ahead and complete the class’s constructor with a call to this function.
public function __construct($name, $bg_image, $adir)
{
$this->fetchUserInfo(strtolower($name));
$this->fetchAvatar($this->profile_image, $adir);
$this->renderImage();
}
