Check if twitter username exists

Question

Is there a way to check if a twitter username exists? Without being authenticated with OAuth or the twitter basic authentication?

Answer 1

As API v1 is no longer available, here is another way to check if a twitter account exists. The page headers of a non existing account contain 404 (page not found).

function twitterAccountExists($username){
    $headers = get_headers("https://twitter.com/".$username);
    if(strpos($headers[0], '404') !== false ) {
        return false;
    } else {
        return true;
    }
}