Do you want to send a Tweet on Twitter with PHP? You might be building an application where you need to programmatically post a Tweet on your Twitter account. It can be achieved using Twitter’s REST API. In this article, we’ll study sending a Tweet on Twitter using Twitter API and PHP.

I’ll use the TwitterOAuth library for the integration of Twitter API. This is an open-source package that allows seamless interaction with Twitter’s REST API.

With the help of this library, I’m going to write code for

• Posting a Tweet on Twitter
• Posting a Tweet on Twitter along with images

Now to get started, you first require to register the application on the Twitter Developer Account. Upon creating an application, you’ll get the API credentials that will be used in our PHP code. These API credentials will act as an identifier of your account.

Register Twitter Application

To register an application, go to the Twitter Developer website and follow the below steps.

• Sign up for a Twitter developer account.
• Create a Twitter App within a developer portal.
• Complete the steps as prompted.
• Copy your Consumer Keys, Access Token, and Secret.

Installation of TwitterOAuth Library

You are ready with the API keys of your Twitter account. Next, install the TwitterOAuth library.

To install this package you should have Composer installed on your system. Also, make sure the cURL extension is enabled on your server.

Open the command prompt in the project root directory and run the command:

composer require abraham/twitteroauth

After installing the library, you have to include the package’s environment and also define API keys using PHP constant. Refer to the below code and add it to your PHP file.

<?php
require_once "vendor/autoload.php";
 
use Abraham\TwitterOAuth\TwitterOAuth;
 
define('CONSUMER_KEY', 'ENTER_YOUR_CONSUMER_KEY');
define('CONSUMER_SECRET', 'ENTER_YOUR_CONSUMER_SECRET');
define('ACCESS_TOKEN', 'ENTER_YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN');
define('ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET', 'ENTER_YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET');
 
$connection = new TwitterOAuth(CONSUMER_KEY, CONSUMER_SECRET, ACCESS_TOKEN, ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET);

Make sure you have replaced all placeholders with their actual values.

Send a Tweet on Twitter with PHP

Twitter provides REST APIs for developers so they can interact with Twitter from their own applications. In order to use these APIs, you need to send HTTP requests to the API endpoints with the required parameters.

For example, posting a Tweet requires you to hit the TWITTER_API_URL/statuses/update endpoint. Don’t worry about the base URL(TWITTER_API_URL) of an API endpoint. The TwitterOAuth library will handle it for you.

Having said that, let’s write the code for it. From the package, you’ll find below 2 lines that will be enough to post a simple text tweet.

$status = 'This is a test tweet. https://artisansweb.net';
$result = $connection->post("statuses/update", ["status" => $status]);

Here, we hit the API endpoint called statuses/update given by Twitter. This endpoint is used to send Tweets on your Twitter account.

If for some reason your Tweet is not posting then you can print the error received in a response. This error will help you to debug the issue.

if ($connection->getLastHttpCode() == 200) {
    echo "Your Tweet posted successfully.";
} else {
    echo 'error: ' . $result->errors[0]->message;
}

So our final code is as follows.

<?php
require_once "vendor/autoload.php";
 
use Abraham\TwitterOAuth\TwitterOAuth;
 
define('CONSUMER_KEY', 'ENTER_YOUR_CONSUMER_KEY');
define('CONSUMER_SECRET', 'ENTER_YOUR_CONSUMER_SECRET');
define('ACCESS_TOKEN', 'ENTER_YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN');
define('ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET', 'ENTER_YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET');
 
$connection = new TwitterOAuth(CONSUMER_KEY, CONSUMER_SECRET, ACCESS_TOKEN, ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET);
 
$status = 'This is a test tweet. https://artisansweb.net';
$result = $connection->post("statuses/update", ["status" => $status]);
if ($connection->getLastHttpCode() == 200) {
    echo "Your Tweet posted successfully.";
} else {
    echo 'error: ' . $result->errors[0]->message;
}

Post a Tweet with Media

If you are looking to send images into your Tweet, you can do it using the same statuses/update endpoint. All you need to do is pass a few extra parameters of your media.

You have to first upload media via Twitter API which in return will give the media id. This media id should be sent as an additional parameter.

I assume you have a 1.jpg file in the directory. Adjust this image path as per your flow.

$connection = new TwitterOAuth(CONSUMER_KEY, CONSUMER_SECRET, ACCESS_TOKEN, ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET);
$media = $connection->upload('media/upload', ['media' => getcwd(). '/1.jpg']);
$parameters = [
    'status' => 'Testing Media Upload via API',
    'media_ids' => $media->media_id_string
];
$result = $connection->post('statuses/update', $parameters);

if ($connection->getLastHttpCode() == 200) {
    echo "Your Tweet posted successfully.";
} else {
    echo 'error: ' . $result->errors[0]->message;
}

You can also send multiple images in your Tweet by generating multiple media ids.

$media1 = $connection->upload('media/upload', ['media' => getcwd(). '/1.jpg']);
$media2 = $connection->upload('media/upload', ['media' => getcwd(). '/2.jpg']);
$parameters = [
    'status' => 'Testing Media Upload via API',
    'media_ids' => implode(',', [$media1->media_id_string, $media2->media_id_string])
];

I hope you understand how to post a Tweet on Twitter with PHP. This tutorial should help you to easily integrate Twitter API into your website. Please share your thoughts and suggestions in the comment section below.

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