So, I’ve already gone into detail on the Arc90 Twitter API Service and it’s pretty fun to work with. One small problem though; it’s pretty big, complicated and, well, bulky. There’s a lot you have to do to get something up and running.

Enter PHPTwitterSearch; a pretty easy to use, lightweight, Twitter API Search class. It’s based on the class originally developed by David Billingham, which I admit, I didn’t check out so I don’t know how much it’s based on.

The thing I didn’t really like about the Arc90 script was how complicated the search process was. In case you didn’t notice, I didn’t go into any detail about the search process; for precisely because it was just to complicated. I stopped having fun when working with the search functionality.

Simplicity was what immediately drew me to PHPTwitterSearch. Here’s a basic example of a search:

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<?php
$query = 'findme';
$search = new SWTwitterSearch();
$search = new TwitterSearch($query);
$results = $search->results();
?>

Very, very simple. The above searches the API for $query.

Here’s the best part though; for a little more complication all you have to do is chain the calls together.

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<?php
$search = new SWTwitterSearch();
$search = new TwitterSearch();
$results = $search->from('username')->with('hashtag')->to('username2')->results();
?>

The above searches the API for tweets from “username” with the hash string “#hashtag” that was sent to the user “username2”.

The class returns an array with objects that’s really basic and simple.