Follower count number in Twitter

Question

How to get my followers count number with PHP.

I found this answer here: Twitter follower count number, but it is not working because API 1.0 is no longer active.

I have also tried with API 1.1 using this URL: https://api.twitter.com/1.1/users/lookup.json?screen_name=google but is is showing an error(Bad Authentication data).

Here is my code:

$data = json_decode(file_get_contents('http://api.twitter.com/1.1/users/lookup.json?screen_name=google'), true);
echo $data[0]['followers_count'];

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Twitter API 1.0 is deprecated and is no longer active.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;
?>

Parsing the XML might be easier in some cases.

Here's a solution (tested):

<?php 
$xml = new SimpleXMLElement(urlencode(strip_tags('https://twitter.com/users/google.xml')), null, true);
echo "Follower count: ".$xml->followers_count;
?>

Hope this helps!

Answer 2

If do it without auth (replace 'stackoverflow' with your user)

$.ajax({
    url: "https://cdn.syndication.twimg.com/widgets/followbutton/info.json?screen_names=stackoverflow"
    dataType : 'jsonp',
    crossDomain : true
}).done(function(data) {
    console.log(data[0]['followers_count']);
});

with php

$tw_username = 'stackoverflow'; 
$data = file_get_contents('https://cdn.syndication.twimg.com/widgets/followbutton/info.json?screen_names='.$tw_username); 
$parsed =  json_decode($data,true);
$tw_followers =  $parsed[0]['followers_count'];