Twitter follower count number

Question

Is the only way to get the follower count number in plain text is using cURL? or does the twitter API provides any such option?

Answer 1

https://api.twitter.com/1/users/lookup.json?screen_name=tvdw (my profile, just replace the screen name)

Also available as XML: https://api.twitter.com/1/users/lookup.xml?screen_name=tvdw

Obtaining it in PHP:

$data = json_decode(file_get_contents('https://api.twitter.com/1/users/lookup.json?screen_name=tvdw'), true);
echo $data[0]['followers_count'];