Check if twitter username exists

Question

Is there a way to check if a twitter username exists? Without being authenticated with OAuth or the twitter basic authentication?

Answer 1

Here is how it works on PHP :

$user_infos = 'http://api.twitter.com/1/users/show.xml?screen_name='.$username;

if (!@fopen($user_infos, 'r'))
{
return false;
}
return true;

Answer 2

This worked for me, close to what sferik has posted.

def twitter_user_exists?(user)
   Twitter.user(user)
   true
rescue Twitter::Error::NotFound
   false
end

Answer 3

Using Ruby, you could install the twitter gem and then define the following method:

require 'twitter'

def user_exists?(user)
  Twitter.user(user)
  true
rescue Twitter::NotFound
  false
end

Then, simply pass in a Twitter user name or id to your method, like so:

user_exists?("sferik") #=> true
user_exists?(7505382) #=> true