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

Twitter API 1.0 is deprecated and is no longer active. With the REST 1.1 API, you need oAuth authentication to retrieve data from Twitter.

Use this instead:

<?php
    require_once('TwitterAPIExchange.php'); //get it from https://github.com/J7mbo/twitter-api-php

    /** Set access tokens here - see: https://dev.twitter.com/apps/ **/
    $settings = array(
        'oauth_access_token' => "YOUR_OAUTH_ACCESS_TOKEN",
        'oauth_access_token_secret' => "YOUR_OAUTH_ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET",
        'consumer_key' => "YOUR_CONSUMER_KEY",
        'consumer_secret' => "YOUR_CONSUMER_SECRET"
    );

    $ta_url = 'https://api.twitter.com/1.1/statuses/user_timeline.json';
    $getfield = '?screen_name=REPLACE_ME';
    $requestMethod = 'GET';
    $twitter = new TwitterAPIExchange($settings);
    $follow_count=$twitter->setGetfield($getfield)
    ->buildOauth($ta_url, $requestMethod)
    ->performRequest();
    $data = json_decode($follow_count, true);
    $followers_count=$data[0]['user']['followers_count'];
    echo $followers_count;
?>

Answer 2

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'];

Answer 3

In API version 1.1 you can use: https://dev.twitter.com/docs/api/1.1/get/users/show

the 'followers_count' field should contain the follower count number.

In API version 1 which is deprecated you can use: https://dev.twitter.com/docs/api/1/get/users/show

Answer 4

<a href="https://twitter.com/twitterapi" class="twitter-follow-button" data-show-count="false" data-lang="en">Follow @twitterapi</a>

<script>
!function(d,s,id){
    var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];
    if(!d.getElementById(id)){
        js=d.createElement(s);
        js.id=id;
        js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";
        fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);
    }
}
(document,"script","twitter-wjs");    
</script>

data-show-count = "true"