Twitter Stream API with PHP/Javascript Implimentation

Question

I am trying to create website to show a live twitter feed concerning a particular hash tag, say #baseball or from a particular user @twitter, my filter looks like #baseball OR @twitter

Now I have done implementation using Phirehose but I want to use AJAX instead so that i can contain the live stream in a fixed div on my website. I searched a lot, and guess many people have done this but I am not able to find any reference code or example of how to do it.

PHP code I am using:

require_once('../lib/Phirehose.php');

class FilterTrackConsumer extends Phirehose
{
  public function enqueueStatus($status)
  {
    $data = json_decode($status, true);
    if (is_array($data) && isset($data['user']['screen_name'])) {
      echo $data['user']['screen_name'] . ': ' . urldecode($data['text']) . "\n";
    }
  }
}

// Start streaming
$sc = new FilterTrackConsumer('abc', 'abc', Phirehose::METHOD_FILTER);
$sc->setTrack(array('@twitter', '#baseball'));
$sc->consume();

I need something similar with Javascript & PHP. Or how to style the output here. Help would be appreciated

Answer 1

The best way to do a live stream update with AJAX is with polling.

Set a timer, make an AJAX request to the page you just posted, add the response to the page with javascript :)

Here are a few pages to make the ajax polling, even tho it is pretty simple in nature, and a setTimeout() would be good enough for the job

http://www.nickriggs.com/posts/simple-ajax-polling-plugin-for-jquery/

https://github.com/RobertFischer/JQuery-PeriodicalUpdater/

Good luck !