PHP: How to use the Twitter API's data to convert URLs, mentions, and hastags in tweets to links?

Question

I\'m really stumped on how Twitter expects users of its API to convert the plaintext tweets it sends to properly linked HTML.

Here\'s the deal: Twitter\'s JSON API sends

Answer 1

Here is a JavaScript version (using jQuery) of vita10gy's solution

function tweetTextToHtml(tweet, links, users, hashtags) {

    if (typeof(links)==='undefined') { links = true; }
    if (typeof(users)==='undefined') { users = true; }
    if (typeof(hashtags)==='undefined') { hashtags = true; }

    var returnStr = tweet.text;
    var entitiesArray = [];

    if(links && tweet.entities.urls.length > 0) {
        jQuery.each(tweet.entities.urls, function() {
            var temp1 = {};
            temp1.start = this.indices[0];
            temp1.end = this.indices[1];
            temp1.replacement = '' + this.display_url + '';
            entitiesArray.push(temp1);
        });
    }

    if(users && tweet.entities.user_mentions.length > 0) {
        jQuery.each(tweet.entities.user_mentions, function() {
            var temp2 = {};
            temp2.start = this.indices[0];
            temp2.end = this.indices[1];
            temp2.replacement = '@' + this.screen_name + '';
            entitiesArray.push(temp2);
        });
    }

    if(hashtags && tweet.entities.hashtags.length > 0) {
        jQuery.each(tweet.entities.hashtags, function() {
            var temp3 = {};
            temp3.start = this.indices[0];
            temp3.end = this.indices[1];
            temp3.replacement = '#' + this.text + '';
            entitiesArray.push(temp3);
        });
    }

    entitiesArray.sort(function(a, b) {return b.start - a.start;});

    jQuery.each(entitiesArray, function() {
        returnStr = substrReplace(returnStr, this.replacement, this.start, this.end - this.start);
    });

    return returnStr;
}

You can then use this function like so ...

for(var i in tweetsJsonObj) {
    var tweet = tweetsJsonObj[i];
    var htmlTweetText = tweetTextToHtml(tweet);

    // Do something with the formatted tweet here ...
}