PHP: How to use the Twitter API's data to convert URLs, mentions, and hastags in tweets to links?

Question

I\'m really stumped on how Twitter expects users of its API to convert the plaintext tweets it sends to properly linked HTML.

Here\'s the deal: Twitter\'s JSON API sends

Answer 1

Ok so I needed to do exactly this and I solved it. Here is the function I wrote. https://gist.github.com/3337428

function parse_message( &$tweet ) {
    if ( !empty($tweet['entities']) ) {
        $replace_index = array();
        $append = array();
        $text = $tweet['text'];
        foreach ($tweet['entities'] as $area => $items) {
            $prefix = false;
            $display = false;
            switch ( $area ) {
                case 'hashtags':
                    $find   = 'text';
                    $prefix = '#';
                    $url    = 'https://twitter.com/search/?src=hash&q=%23';
                    break;
                case 'user_mentions':
                    $find   = 'screen_name';
                    $prefix = '@';
                    $url    = 'https://twitter.com/';
                    break;
                case 'media':
                    $display = 'media_url_https';
                    $href    = 'media_url_https';
                    $size    = 'small';
                    break;
                case 'urls':
                    $find    = 'url';
                    $display = 'display_url';
                    $url     = "expanded_url";
                    break;
                default: break;
            }
            foreach ($items as $item) {
                if ( $area == 'media' ) {
                    // We can display images at the end of the tweet but sizing needs to added all the way to the top.
                    // $append[$item->$display] = "$href}:$size\" />";
                }else{
                    $msg     = $display ? $prefix.$item->$display : $prefix.$item->$find;
                    $replace = $prefix.$item->$find;
                    $href    = isset($item->$url) ? $item->$url : $url;
                    if (!(strpos($href, 'http') === 0)) $href = "http://".$href;
                    if ( $prefix ) $href .= $item->$find;
                    $with = "$msg";
                    $replace_index[$replace] = $with;
                }
            }
        }
        foreach ($replace_index as $replace => $with) $tweet['text'] = str_replace($replace,$with,$tweet['text']);
        foreach ($append as $add) $tweet['text'] .= $add;
    }
}