Category: WordPress

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Getting the Number of Twitter Followers Without Using the Twitter API

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Since Twitter upgraded the Twitter REST API to version 1.1 earlier this year, a simple HTTP query against the API no longer works. You now have to include authentication information which would require redevelopment of many programs that perform this previously simple action.

I wanted to include the number of Twitter followers on this blog using the Social Impact Widget, which was made for version 1 of the Twitter API.

Using the YQL language API from Yahoo, this information can still be retrieved by Web scraping, without resorting to using Twitter’s API. Aakash Chakravarthy’s article explains this method well.

By using this method, the PHP code in the Social Impact Widget can be modified to pull the number of Twitter followers via Web scraping.

The original PHP code for the widget that retrieves the Twitter data:

$return_Twitter = $this->_helper_curl(sprintf('https://api.twitter.com/1/users/show.json?screen_name=%1$s',
		$var_sTwitterId
	), $this->var_sUserAgent);

Remove this code and add the below, also making some changes to the try block immediately below it to change the way it stores the returned data:

$return_Twitter = $this->_helper_curl('http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q=SELECT%20*%20from%20html%20where%20url=%22http://twitter.com/' . $var_sTwitterId . '%22%20AND%20xpath=%22//a[@class='js-nav']/strong%22&format=json'
                    , $this->var_sUserAgent); // Opening the Query URL
	try {
		$obj_TwitterData = json_decode($return_Twitter);
		if($obj_TwitterData) {
			if(!empty($obj_TwitterData->query->results->strong[2])) {
				$this->array_Options[$this->var_sArrayOptionsKey]['twitter-count'] = intval(str_replace(',', '', $obj_TwitterData->query->results->strong[2]));
			} // END if(!empty($obj_TwitterData->query->results->strong[2]))
		} // ENDif($obj_TwitterData)
	} catch(Exception $e) {
		$this->array_Options[$this->var_sArrayOptionsKey]['twitter-count'] = (int) $var_iTwitterFollowerCount;
	}

And now, your widget will appear correctly! The caveat here is that if Twitter ever changes the layout of the site, then the line

$obj_TwitterData->query->results->strong[2]


will have to be modified accordingly.

Posted on

Making the SyntaxHighlighter Evolved Plugin Work with Infinite Scroll on WordPress.org Sites

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SyntaxHighlighter Evolved is a great plugin to format source code on a WordPress.org blog. Also, WordPress.org blogs can now allow you to use Infinite Scroll, which uses AJAX to load posts as you scroll down the blog.

The problem is that once you begin scrolling past the first block of posts that were initially loaded, the posts loaded using Infinite Scroll no longer highlight the code.

The fix is to call the “SyntaxHighlighter.highlight()” method each time a block of posts are loaded.

I’m sure there are many ways this could be done. The way I chose was to take this block of code from the file “jetpack/modules/infinite-scroll/infinity.php”:

// If primary and fallback rendering methods fail, prevent further IS rendering attempts. Otherwise, wrap the output if requested.
if ( empty( $results['html'] ) ) {
    unset( $results['html'] );
    do_action( 'infinite_scroll_empty' );
    $results['type'] = 'empty';
} elseif ( $this->has_wrapper() ) {
    $wrapper_classes = is_string( self::get_settings()->wrapper ) ? self::get_settings()->wrapper : 'infinite-wrap';
    $wrapper_classes .= ' infinite-view-' . $page;
    $wrapper_classes = trim( $wrapper_classes );

    $results['html'] = '<div class="' . esc_attr( $wrapper_classes ) . '" id="infinite-view-' . $page . '" data-page-num="' . $page . '">' . $results['html'] . '</div>';
}

and add this one line to the block:

$results['html'] .= '<script type="text/javascript">SyntaxHighlighter.highlight();</script>';

resulting in this block:

// If primary and fallback rendering methods fail, prevent further IS rendering attempts. Otherwise, wrap the output if requested.
if ( empty( $results['html'] ) ) {
    unset( $results['html'] );
    do_action( 'infinite_scroll_empty' );
    $results['type'] = 'empty';
} elseif ( $this->has_wrapper() ) {
    $wrapper_classes = is_string( self::get_settings()->wrapper ) ? self::get_settings()->wrapper : 'infinite-wrap';
    $wrapper_classes .= ' infinite-view-' . $page;
    $wrapper_classes = trim( $wrapper_classes );

    $results['html'] = '<div class="' . esc_attr( $wrapper_classes ) . '" id="infinite-view-' . $page . '" data-page-num="' . $page . '">' . $results['html'] . '</div>';
    $results['html'] .= '<script type="text/javascript">SyntaxHighlighter.highlight();</script>';
}

Save the file and reload your blog. All code blocks should now be highlighted as you scroll!