jQuery Twitter plugin update – jTwitter 1.1

Some time ago I created jQuery Twitter plugin – jTwitter. Plugin lets you get data about any Twitter user, such as user’s bio, profile image, homepage URL, background image URL, following count, followers count, messages count, etc. without any Twitter API key. It is very useful to attach additional Twitter data to your site’s user profiles, etc.

However, it was not very handy for creating your own and custom Twitter Badge. Well, right until now! I updated jTwitter plugin and now it can get you not only Twitter user details but also any number of that user’s latest posts. And yes, all these you can do without any Twitter API keys.

Here is the main function and its argument details:

$.jTwitter(username, numberOfPosts, callbackFunction);

/* username - Twitter username
   numberOfPosts - Number of user posts to get
   callbackFunction - callback function to call
   when data is loaded */

Let’s see a real life example now. In example below, we are fetching latest 3 posts of jQueryHowto Twitter user and appending those post messages to some DOM element with an id=tweets.

$.jTwitter('jQueryHowto', 3, function(posts){
  for(var i=0; i<posts.length; i++){
     $('#tweets').append(posts[i].text);
  }
});

You can see example usage and demo here.

To get a clear view of what data is returned and available in your callback function here is an example of returned JSON data object:

/*
    Example of returned object
*/

[
  {
    'in_reply_to_user_id':null,
    'in_reply_to_screen_name':null,
    'source':'web',
    'created_at':'Fri Sep 18 06:11:15 +0000 2009',
    'truncated':false,
    'user':{
      'profile_background_color':'9ae4e8',
      'description':'jQuery and JavaScript howtos, tutorials, hacks, tips and performanace tests. Ask your jQuery questions here...',
      'notifications':false,
      'time_zone':'Central Time (US & Canada)',
      'url':'http://jquery-howto.blogspot.com',
      'screen_name':'jQueryHowto',
      'following':true,
      'profile_sidebar_fill_color':'e0ff92',
      'created_at':'Thu Mar 26 14:58:19 +0000 2009',
      'profile_sidebar_border_color':'87bc44',
      'followers_count':2042,
      'statuses_count':505,
      'friends_count':1015,
      'profile_text_color':'000000',
      'protected':false,
      'profile_background_image_url':'http://s.twimg.com/a/1253209888/images/themes/theme1/bg.png',
      'location':'',
      'name':'jQuery HowTo',
      'favourites_count':15,
      'profile_link_color':'0000ff',
      'id':26767000,
      'verified':false,
      'profile_background_tile':false,
      'utc_offset':-21600,
      'profile_image_url':'http://a3.twimg.com/profile_images/110763033/jquery_normal.gif'
      },
    'in_reply_to_status_id':null,
    'id':4073301536,
    'favorited':false,
    'text':'Host jQuery on Microsoft CDN servers http://retwt.me/2N3P'
  },
  {
    'in_reply_to_user_id':null,
    'in_reply_to_screen_name':null,
    'source':'<a href="http://www.hootsuite.com" rel="nofollow">HootSuite</a>',
    'created_at':'Thu Sep 17 17:20:21 +0000 2009',
    'truncated':false,
    'user':{
      'profile_sidebar_fill_color':'e0ff92',
      'description':'jQuery and JavaScript howtos, tutorials, hacks, tips and performanace tests. Ask your jQuery questions here...',
      'friends_count':1015,
      'url':'http://jquery-howto.blogspot.com',
      'screen_name':'jQueryHowto',
      'following':false,
      'profile_sidebar_border_color':'87bc44',
      'favourites_count':15,
      'created_at':'Thu Mar 26 14:58:19 +0000 2009',
      'profile_text_color':'000000',
      'profile_background_image_url':'http://s.twimg.com/a/1253141863/images/themes/theme1/bg.png',
      'profile_link_color':'0000ff',
      'protected':false,
      'verified':false,
      'statuses_count':504,
      'profile_background_tile':false,
      'location':'',
      'name':'jQuery HowTo',
      'profile_background_color':'9ae4e8',
      'id':26767000,
      'notifications':false,
      'time_zone':'Central Time (US & Canada)',
      'utc_offset':-21600,
      'followers_count':2038,
      'profile_image_url':'http://a3.twimg.com/profile_images/110763033/jquery_normal.gif'
    },
    'in_reply_to_status_id':null,
    'id':4058535256,
    'favorited':false,
    'text':'jQuery Tip: Don't forget that you can load jQuery UI files from Google servers as well http://bit.ly/fJs2r'
  },
  {
    'in_reply_to_user_id':null,
    'in_reply_to_screen_name':null,
    'source':'web',
    'created_at':'Thu Sep 17 05:44:30 +0000 2009',
    'truncated':false,
    'user':{
      'profile_sidebar_fill_color':'e0ff92',
      'description':'jQuery and JavaScript howtos, tutorials, hacks, tips and performanace tests. Ask your jQuery questions here...',
      'friends_count':1015,
      'url':'http://jquery-howto.blogspot.com',
      'screen_name':'jQueryHowto',
      'following':true,
      'profile_sidebar_border_color':'87bc44',
      'favourites_count':15,
      'created_at':'Thu Mar 26 14:58:19 +0000 2009',
      'profile_text_color':'000000',
      'profile_background_image_url':'http://s.twimg.com/a/1253048135/images/themes/theme1/bg.png',
      'profile_link_color':'0000ff','protected':false,
      'verified':false,
      'statuses_count':503,
      'profile_background_tile':false,
      'location':'',
      'name':'jQuery HowTo',
      'profile_background_color':'9ae4e8',
      'id':26767000,
      'notifications':false,
      'time_zone':'Central Time (US & Canada)',
      'utc_offset':-21600,
      'followers_count':2035,
      'profile_image_url':'http://a3.twimg.com/profile_images/110763033/jquery_normal.gif'
    },
    'in_reply_to_status_id':null,
    'id':4048429737,
    'favorited':false,
    'text':'Added a demo page for my 'How to bind events to AJAX loaded elements' blog post as requested by users http://bit.ly/q2tWe'
  }
]

As you can see, you get not only user’s latest posts but also all the information about posts and user who posted it on Twitter.

You might also be interested in my jQuery YouTube Plugin.
It gets any YouTube video’s thumbnail image.

If you are using Twitter don’t forget to follow me.