Ushahidi post tweets to API php example

Date: 2010.07.15 | Category: ICT, my school closures, school, school closures, ushahidi

The below code takes an rss search result from twitter, detects the authors location then posts the information to Ushahidi via the API.

Application I used it in: My School Closures for detecting people who tweet about school closures.  Unfortunately I have to use pipes for the location builder which isn’t elegant as Yahoo Pipes sucks and I wish I never started playing with it.  Feel free to play with the pipe I created to get geo location information from a location name, it is the pipe that has the json_decode.

You will need mysql and a table for the guids (this stops us from spamming twitter for authors we have already located). Make sure you change the configuration settings and create a table in mysql.

The method is simple, the code isn’t pretty and will require polishing but here it is:

<pre>
<?php
//CONFIGURE THE SETTINGS BELOW
//twitter settings
$twitterusername = "mytwitteraccount";
$twitterpassword = "apasswordgoeshere";

//database settings
$host = "databasehostname";
$user = "databaseusername";
$pass = "databasepassword";
$dbname = 'databasename';

// You should create a table called tweetguids in your database
$tablename = "tweetguids";

// Change the below feed to a rss feed similar to below
$rssurl = "http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=a9663ebc09e69b9195fb2407fba9f2bc&_render=rss";

// END OF CONFIG

$conn = mysql_connect($host, $user, $pass) or die                      ('Error connecting to mysql');
mysql_select_db($dbname);

ini_set('display_errors', 1);
ini_set('log_errors', 1);
ini_set('error_log', dirname(__FILE__) . '/error_log.txt');
error_reporting(E_ALL);

$rss = simplexml_load_file($rssurl) or die("failure");
$count = 0;
foreach ($rss->channel as $chan)
{
$time = $chan->pubDate;
}
foreach ($rss->channel as $chan){$time = $chan->pubDate;}
foreach ($rss->channel->item as $item)
        {
        // only do first 10 records
        if ($count < 10)
                {
                $foundguid=0;
                $guidnew=$item->guid;
                // Check to see if guid exists in db already
                $sql="SELECT * FROM $tablename where guid = \"$guidnew\"";
                $result=mysql_query($sql, $conn);
                while ($row=mysql_fetch_array($result))
                        {
                        $foundguid=1;
                        echo "Foundguid: $foundguid";
                        }
                if($foundguid==1)
                        {
                        echo "We found an alredy existing guid...";
                        }
else
                        {
                        $count = $count + 1;
                        $task="report";
                        $incident_title=$item->title;
                        $guidnew=$item->guid;
                        $incident_title=str_replace(" ","+",$incident_title);
                        $incident_description=$item->description;
                        $incident_description=str_replace(" ","+",$incident_description);
                        $incident_date=date("m/d/Y",$time);
                        $incident_hour=date("H",$time);
                        $incident_minute=date("i",$time);
                        $incident_ampm=date("a",$time);
                        $incident_category="Possible Closure";
                        $location_name="Unknown";
                        $author = $item->author;
                        $author = str_replace(" ","+",$author);
                        $pos = strpos($author,"+");
                        //$author = substr($author,0,$pos);
                        $author = str_ireplace("http://twitter.com/","",$author);
                        $url = "http://$twitterusername:$twitterpassword@api.twitter.com/1/users/lookup.xml?screen_name=$author";
                        //echo $url;
                        $output = simplexml_load_file($url) or die("badauth");
                        foreach ($output->user as $item)
                                {
                                // Get the values out of the XML
                                $location=$item->location;
                                // Clean up the location
                                $location=str_ireplace("-",",",$location);
                                $location=str_ireplace(" ",",",$location);
//                              $location=preg_replace("/[^a-zA-Z0-9\s]/", "", $location);
                                echo "<br/><b>Location content: $location<br/>";
                                // Pass the location to yahoo pipe
                                $location = str_ireplace(" ","",$location);
                                //echo "<br/>Loc: $location";
                                $locationurl = "http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=03539616e4cdd62eb15ed26b81e3041e&_render=json&q=$location";

                                 $ch = curl_init();
                                curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $locationurl);
                                curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);

                                //make the request
                                $json = curl_exec($ch);
                                $arr = (json_decode($json,true));
                                $blah = $arr['value']['items'][0]['name']['loc'];
                                //print_r($blah);
                                $latitude = $blah['lat'];
                                $longitude = $blah['lon'];
                                $location_name = $blah['city'];
                        }

                        $incident_description="Closure reported from twitter";
                        $url = "task=report&incident_title=$incident_title&incident_description=$incident_description&incident_date=$incident_date&incident_hour=$incident_hour&incident_minute=$incident_minu$
                        $posturl = "http://myschoolclosures.com/ushahidi/api";
                        $Curl_Session = curl_init($posturl);
                         curl_setopt ($Curl_Session, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
                         curl_setopt ($Curl_Session, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS,
                        $url);
                        curl_setopt ($Curl_Session, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1);
                        curl_exec ($Curl_Session);
                        curl_close ($Curl_Session);
                        //Write to the database
                        $sqlgo="INSERT INTO $tablename VALUES (\"$guidnew\")";
                        $result=mysql_query($sqlgo, $conn);
                }
        }
        //Write anything else to DB just in case anything trails behind
        $sql="INSERT INTO $tablename VALUES (\"$guidnew\")";
        $result=mysql_query($sql, $conn);
        $row=mysql_fetch_array($result);
        //echo "<br/>$sql<br/>";
}
?>

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