18 May

Add Twitter to your blog (step-by-step)

Hotlink from Google

<script src="http://twitterjs.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/src/twitter.min.js"></script>

Download to self host

Download latest Twitter.js

Following on from how to add Twitter without hanging your blog, as requested, here is a step-by-step guide to adding Twitter to your blog without it hanging your web site.

Below is a working example of loading twitters after the page has completed, thus preventing the whole page from locking up (notice that the spinner will continue until the twitters are loaded) – based on my tweets from myself:

Please wait while my tweets load

Using my twitter.js script.

Options

The function tags the following parameters:

CSS id of target element
Settings object (details below)

Settings object:

id: your screen name on Twitter, for example mine is “rem“. This can also be a list (in the format of user/list-name, ie. rem/conferences) or a hash tag.
count: number of twitters you want, defaults to 1.
clearContents: if you have content in the container you may want to clear it. Defaults to true.
enableLinks: true/false – scans the tweet for a link and makes it clickable, includes @replies and #hashtags, by default is true.
ignoreReplies: true/false – skips over tweets starting with @. If requesting 1 tweet, and this flag is set, behind the scenes it will request 2 in case the first starts with @ – but if the 2 most recent are replies, nothing will be shown.
currently disabled withFriends: true/false – whether to include friends tweets. Defaults to false.
template: the HTML template to use within each li element. See below for template variables.
prefix: if not using a template, you can use this. If you want to prefix each twitter, add here, e.g. ‘Remy said’. Note that you can use template variables in this field.
timeout: Number of milliseconds before triggering onTimeout. If onTimeout is set, timeout defaults to 10 seconds.
onTimeout: Function to call when timeout is reached. Context is set to HTML element tweets were going to be inserted into.
onTimeoutCancel: true/false – if not set, the timeout can trigger, but then the Twitter script could complete and override the cancel. To avoid this, set onTimeoutCancel = true. Defaults to false.
newwindow: true/false – if set to true, all links in tweets (and otherwise) will open in a new window. Defaults to false.
callback – Function to call when the twitter render is completed. Doesn’t fire if the script times out.

For example:

getTwitters('tweet', { 
  id: 'rem', 
  count: 1, 
  enableLinks: true, 
  ignoreReplies: true, 
  clearContents: true,
  template: '"%text%" <a href="http://twitter.com/%user_screen_name%/statuses/%id_str%/">%time%</a>'
});

Template variables

All variables should be wrapped in % symbols (see the above example).

text – the actual status message
id_str – id of status message (note that id was used before, but for the ids to be correct, you need to use id_str)
source
time – relative ‘friendly’ time
created_at – raw time
user_name – real name
user_screen_name – username
user_id_str
user_profile_image_url – avatar
user_url – home page
user_location
user_description

Container HTML

You need to insert a holder element for the twitters to go in to. In the example above, I’ve included some ‘waiting to load’ content – but you don’t have to.

Here’s what I did:

<div id="tweet">
 <p>Please wait while my tweets load <img src="/images/indicator.gif" /></p>
 <p><a href="http://twitter.com/rem">If you can't wait - check out what I've been twittering</a></p>
</div>

Here are some more progress indicators.

If you include contents inside the holder div, then you’ll need to set the ‘clearContents’ flag.

Add the script

You can directly from the Google code repository (as seen in the example below).

Add the following code within the head or (best at the bottom of the) body tag:

<script 
 src="http://twitterjs.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/src/twitter.min.js" 
 type="text/javascript">
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8">
getTwitters('tweet', { 
  id: 'rem', 
  count: 1, 
  enableLinks: true, 
  ignoreReplies: true, 
  clearContents: true,
  template: '"%text%" <a href="http://twitter.com/%user_screen_name%/statuses/%id_str%/">%time%</a>'
});
</script>

(this example will generate my twitter status in quotes on a single line with the ‘ago’ linkable back to the original twitter post)

Note that the getTwitters function will execute after the page has been loaded by your browser. It will fire once the DOM is loaded but before images are loaded.

Styling

If you don’t use a template, then the HTML is generated for you.

Each block of text is contained with in a span and includes it’s own class, e.g. the HTML generated would look like this:

<div id="tweet">
  <ul>
    <li>
      <span class="twitterPrefix">Remy said: </span>
      <span class="twitterStatus">I just had a bizarre spaces moment - moving my cursor to the bottom of the screen switched space - annoying if it hadn't just gone away.</span>
      <span class="twitterTime">20 minutes ago</span>
    </li>
    <li>
      <span class="twitterPrefix">Remy said: </span>
      <span class="twitterStatus">Great quote - Michael J Fox: "my happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance, and in inverse proportion to my expectations."</span>
      <span class="twitterTime">7 days ago</span>
    </li>
  </ul>
</div>

So each block of content is targetable using CSS to style the way you wish.

Comments, feedback or suggestions will be more thank welcome.

You should follow me on Twitter here I'll tweet about JavaScript, HTML 5 and other such gems (amongst usual tweet-splurges)

494 Responses to “Add Twitter to your blog (step-by-step)”

Jim May 19th, 2007 at 3:55 pm

Thank you very much, it worked really well!
KennyH May 19th, 2007 at 5:55 pm

That’s a clever way to work around the AJAX restriction on loading data from a different site. I’ve been working on a twitter proxy to run on my site so that I could use ajax commands to get twitter data. I like this solution much better.

When I was working on my code, I was having problems with my browser caching the twitter data. It would only update about once an hour or so. Have you seen that issue with this code?

You don’t mention licensing of this code anywhere. Copyleft? MIT-style? GPL? Public Domain? Hopefully, one of those.
Nik Fletcher May 19th, 2007 at 6:00 pm

Hi Remy,

This is a really neat piece of code – thank you. I’m using it with RapidWeaver, and it seems to not hide the progress indicator once the tweets have loaded. Sadly my JS knowledge is, well, lacking. Any pointers? Thanks! Nik
:// dharmalog / by nando pereira » Esse Twitter faz coisa May 19th, 2007 at 8:00 pm

[...] + Add Twitter to your blog: um script para adicionar o Twitter no seu blog, diferente do badge oficial. [...]
Blog Author Remy Sharp May 20th, 2007 at 11:41 am

@KennyH – on the browser caching you can try one of the following two to get around the problem:

1) Cache busting – add a random number to the end of the requested URL – then the browser won’t cache it, e.g.

var cb_url = url '&cb=' Math.random();

2) Use POST instead of a GET on the request. The browser can’t cache POST requests so this also gets around the problem. However, with a POST you need to ensure the server will still serve up the page properly – but it’s relatively easy to test.

On the license on the code – I’ve updated the file with a Creative Commons ShareAlike license – basically: help yourselves.

@Nik – If you drop me an example link I’ll take a look at fixing the problem.
Nik Fletcher May 20th, 2007 at 7:49 pm

http://www.nikfletcher.com/20 is the URL. There’s an assortment of Scripatculous scripts in there as well, but when I removed all the Javascript except twitters.js, it still appeared to not hide the loading animation. Thanks!
Blog Author Remy Sharp May 20th, 2007 at 8:30 pm

@Nik – my fault – there was a typo in the example I provided (typical). The parameter ‘clearContent’ should read ‘clearContents‘. That will fix it.

I’ve also just released a new version the twitter.js that uses a better load event, i.e. if fires before the images are loaded rather than waiting.
Nik Fletcher May 21st, 2007 at 11:30 am

Fantastic. I’ve now started it using it on my ‘live’ site.

Many Thanks!

-N
kosmar May 27th, 2007 at 9:04 pm

great work, thx
chrischen June 4th, 2007 at 7:47 am

is this script still working? i cant seem to make it work, and i cant see it working at nikfletcher’s page either…
Blog Author Remy Sharp June 4th, 2007 at 8:29 am

@chrischen – good point! I’m looking in to it now…
Blog Author Remy Sharp June 4th, 2007 at 8:37 am

Hi all,

It looks like the URL that was in the twitter plugin I wrote was recently depreciated by Twitter. I’ve now updated the plugin and it’s working again.

Good catch chrischen – cheers.
Linkify + upgrade to twitter plugin at remy sharp’s b:log June 4th, 2007 at 2:36 pm

[...] twitter plugin has just been upgraded to (optionally) search for links in the twitter text and activate them as [...]
Tim June 15th, 2007 at 9:02 pm

This is exactly what I’ve been looking for. Thanks for making this available!

How can I format the text, though? I’d like to make the, “about 15 minutes ago” text italicized and a different color so it stands out from the twitter text. I looked around in the js file, but I’m not a programmer and couldn’t figure it out. Thanks for your help!

Mads June 27th, 2007 at 10:54 am

Open the twitter.js file in a text editor. You can edit the status messages.

For example, I translated them into Danish so they would fit on my site:

var r = '';
  if (delta < 60) {
    r = 'mindre end et minut siden';
  } else if(delta < 120) {
    r = 'omkring et minut siden';
  } else if(delta < (4560)) {
    r = (parseInt(delta / 60)).toString() + ' minutter siden';
  } else if(delta < (9060)) {
    r = 'omkring en time siden';
  } else if(delta < (246060)) {
    r = 'omkring ' + (parseInt(delta / 3600)).toString() + ' timer siden';
  } else if(delta < (486060)) {
    r = '1 dag siden';
  } else {
    r = (parseInt(delta / 86400)).toString() + ' dage siden';
  }

Nathan July 2nd, 2007 at 9:49 pm

Yeah, this is perfect!

I’d also love to have the ability to format the text. Is there away to append a class to the generated span tags so that they are style-able? Like Tim, I’m not a programmer but assume something like this, or easier, should work.
Bios July 7th, 2007 at 5:37 am

Nice code, hats off to you my friend. Thanks for sharing this tutorial.
Daniel July 8th, 2007 at 7:01 pm

I can’t seem to get mine to work: http://www.rapidmac.com
I looked through the JS file and the page code, but I can’t figure out what could be causing the problem.
Daniel July 9th, 2007 at 4:11 am

Never mind I fixed it. However, is there any (relatively easy) way to style the times text so it is different from the tweet text?
Troy August 4th, 2007 at 4:13 pm

I have a group blog, 5 members, and was wondering if there was a way to send multiple ids and get 1 tweet per user. I tried multiple copies of the .js and setting divs as twitters1 twitters2 …. but that didnt work, I either got the only the last one to show up, or they others showed up but with the last person’s prefix so they were not identified correctly.
What is JSONP? October 8th, 2007 at 9:30 am

[...] Twitter’s JavaScript blog plugin works in exactly the same way. You create a function to handle the data from Twitter, and insert a script tag. Once the script is inserted, it calls the function passing the Twitter data as a JSON object. [...]
Stefaan November 1st, 2007 at 9:15 pm

Great code! How do I remove the bullet before the text?
Laura November 5th, 2007 at 5:54 pm

Yes, I’d also like to figure out how to remove that pesky bullet…thanks in advance
10drill November 21st, 2007 at 8:11 am
Remove the bullet with css:
```
twitter_update_list li {
  list-style-type: none;
}
```
Nate November 26th, 2007 at 7:29 pm

I did the css trick with my blog, http://natenews.tumblr.com. Is there a better way to re-align it after the indent besides adding: margin-left: -40px; ?
Douglas Karr January 2nd, 2008 at 2:48 am

Perfect! Thanks Remy! We need to make this a WordPress plugin!
Borbs January 5th, 2008 at 1:55 pm

This is great! But I have a question: is there a way to DO NOT SHOW the REPLIES? I thought about the clearContents, but I don’t know if this is possible… =]

Thank you! =]
Blog Author Remy Sharp January 5th, 2008 at 2:43 pm

@Borbs – do you mean that out of a list of, say 10 tweets, you want to ignore any that start with @myfriend?

If so, I’m in the process of doing some small upgrades to the script and I can include this feature as an option.
Blog Author Remy Sharp January 5th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
@Borbs – I’ve updated the twitter.js script to also support an ignoreReplies option.

I’ve also fixed HTML entities from appearing in the tweet and wrapped each logical block in a span with it’s own class name:
```
SPAN.twitterPrefix
SPAN.twitterStatus
SPAN.twitterTime
```
Tommy January 8th, 2008 at 1:43 am

Hi remy, thanks for the great script and also taking the time to help individuals like me implement it to my site.

Im trying to work out how to format the text to be trebuchet Ms bold 7pt White whn it shows the twitters.

i promise i have tried but cannot get the css to work, i have absolutely no idea how to write css and link it to the Twitter result.

Can you help please

thanks

Tommy
Blog Author Remy Sharp January 8th, 2008 at 1:51 am
@Tommy – if you want all the text to be bold and white – this will do (assuming you’re using ‘twitters’ as the ID on the container):
```
#twitters {
  font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Arial, sans-serif;
  font-size: 7pt;
  color: #fff;
  font-weight: bold;
}
```
If you wanted to target specific blocks of content, such as just the time and make it, perhaps blue (you get the idea):
```
#twitters SPAN.twitterTime {
  color: #00f;
}
```
Tommy January 8th, 2008 at 2:26 am

Remy, i will try this right now thanks for a very very prompt reply.

T
Tommy January 9th, 2008 at 12:55 am

Hi Remy, can i just say wherever you are in the world, thank goodness. great help for a novice with pretty rudimentary coding skills. Your help was second to none and your script rocks. thanks so much for taking your time out and helping another Webhed.

you truly are a decent fella.

Best Regards, Cheers!

Tommy

http://www.innocentinteractive.com (My portfolio)
_ram-jaane' January 10th, 2008 at 5:34 pm

Probably no issue with the script at all but I’m having trouble with 2 pages acting differently:

http://ramchandra.me.uk/blog/
http://ramchandra.me.uk/about/

I’ve followed the exact same steps & in firefox — spot on!
in IE however I get “Operation Aborted” message on the Blog page (not on the About) .. very weird. I’ll update to your latest & greatest script & see if that helps.
_ram-jaane' January 10th, 2008 at 5:42 pm

Whatever change you made in that release — fixed it :) Yay!
Jay Robinson January 11th, 2008 at 5:06 pm

Thanks a lot, Remy. This is a really cool script.

You can see it in my link: http://jayrobinson.name

Or check out my other site, a travel blog while I’m abroad: http://nopeanutbutter.com
Hammer February 2nd, 2008 at 7:18 pm

Any way to pull the tweets of my friends as well as my own like Twitter does with one of their flash options?
Lester Chan's Website February 5th, 2008 at 1:27 pm

Twitter

I have “Twitterlise” this site (via Remy Sharp), my WordPress site (via Twitter for WordPress), my Facebook profile (via Twitter Application For Facebook), my Windows Live Messenger (via Twessenger) and my Messenger Plus! Live (via Twit4Li…
Sarah February 19th, 2008 at 6:07 am

Hi, I am currently using your script and I love it. Definitely the one after looking around for hours. I have a question. Where in the .js file could I put the date in parentheses?
Blog Author Remy Sharp February 26th, 2008 at 12:53 pm

@Sarah + @Hammer – I’m going to release the new version of the script today.

New features include, the ability to include friend’s tweets, use of variables in the text (i.e. in the prefix you want the appropriate name to appear), and the biggest change – template driven output.

This will give you complete control over how the twitter appears, and in your case Sarah, you’ll be able wrap the date or do as you please.
links for 2008-02-28 « Bloggitation February 28th, 2008 at 2:22 am

[...] Add Twitter to your blog (step-by-step) (tags: twitter javascript web web2.0 blog programming wordpress) [...]
Shane March 3rd, 2008 at 4:36 pm

Many, many thanks – this is JUST what I was looking for :)
Hammer March 8th, 2008 at 3:53 pm

With the addition of friends and the template driven output this is really quite fantastic.
Piotr March 22nd, 2008 at 12:31 am

I love the script! It’s just what I was looking for. Thanks for sharing! Brilliant work!

Kind regards.
Blog Author Remy Sharp March 22nd, 2008 at 12:55 am

@Piotr – I see from your web site you’ve reverted back to 1.2 of Twitter.js. Is the new ones not working for you? If you have an example, I don’t mind taking a look.
Koka March 28th, 2008 at 2:07 am

Remy, this is a newbie question. Where do I upload the script to? The theme root or the website root?
Blog Author Remy Sharp March 28th, 2008 at 9:45 am

@Koka – it doesn’t really matter, but if you want to keep things really simple, stick it in the root of your web site (usually htdocs) and refer to it as /twitter.js
Paul April 3rd, 2008 at 4:25 pm

Absolutely brilliant. The solution to a problem I’ve had for a good while.Thank you so much!
Unsquare Dance / A Blog in Miniature April 4th, 2008 at 2:44 am

[...] Tools for regular Twitter digest posts and built-in posting from WP, and a combination of twitter.js and the Twitter Widget for my sidebar [...]
Blaenk Denum April 8th, 2008 at 8:34 am

Hey, thanks for this. However, I don’t want the resulting information to be within ul and li tags. I’m only telling the function to give me 1 update, and the reason is I want to put it within a p tag, but it keeps giving me an li tag no matter what. I’ve spent two hours trying to figure out how to do this to no avail and I’m going insane. I would really appreciate if you could help me with this, please.