Several months ago Twitter added the list feature to it's public API. While debating some use cases for an event registration application I stumbled upon an interesting feature, which adds participants automatically to a Twitter list upon registration. This way registered and interested users can discover like-minded individuals and get in touch prior to any pre-social event activities. This post will show how this feature can be implemented by utilizing the Zend_Service_Twitter component, and how it then can be used in a Zend Framework based application.Implementing the common list featuresLooking at the three relevant parts of the Twitter list API some common features emerged and had to be supported to get the feature out of the door. These are namely the creation, deletion of new lists and the addition, removal of list members (i.e. event participants). Since the current Twitter component doesn't support these list operations out of the box it was time to put that develeoper hat on and get loose; which was actually a joy due to the elegance of the extended Zend_Service_Twitter component laying all the groundwork. A non-feature-complete implementation is shown in the next code listing and can alternatively be pulled from GitHub. Currently it only supports the above stated common operations plus the ability to get the lists of a Twitter account and it's associated members; but feel free to fork it or even turn it into an official proposal.
<?php
require_once 'Zend/Service/Twitter.php';
require_once 'Zend/Service/Twitter/Exception.php';
class Recordshelf_Service_Twitter_List extends Zend_Service_Twitter
{
const LIST_MEMBER_LIMIT = 500;
const MAX_LIST_NAME_LENGTH = 25;
const MAX_LIST_DESCRIPTION_LENGTH = 100;
/**
* Initializes the service and adds the list to the method types
* of the parent service class.
*
* @param string $username The Twitter account name.
* @param string $password The Twitter account password.
* @see Zend_Service_Twitter::_methodTypes
*/
public function __construct($username = null, $password = null)
{
parent::__construct($username, $password);
$this->_methodTypes[] = 'list';
}
/**
* Creates a list associated to the current user.
*
* @param string $listname The listname to create.
* @param array $options The options to set whilst creating the list.
* Allows to set the list creation mode (public|private)
* and the list description.
* @return Zend_Rest_Client_Result
* @throws Zend_Service_Twitter_Exception
*/
public function create($listname, array $options = array())
{
$this->_init();
if ($this->_existsListAlready($listname)) {
$exceptionMessage = 'List with name %s exists already';
$exceptionMessage = sprintf($exceptionMessage, $listname);
throw new Zend_Service_Twitter_Exception($exceptionMessage);
}
$_options = array('name' => $this->_validListname($listname));
foreach ($options as $key => $value) {
switch (strtolower($key)) {
case 'mode':
$_options['mode'] = $this->_validMode($value);
break;
case 'description':
$_options['description'] = $this->_validDescription($value);
break;
default:
break;
}
}
$path = '/1/%s/lists.xml';
$path = sprintf($path, $this->getUsername());
$response = $this->_post($path, $_options);
return new Zend_Rest_Client_Result($response->getBody());
}
/**
* Deletes an owned list of the current user.
*
* @param string $listname The listname to delete.
* @return Zend_Rest_Client_Result
* @throws Zen
Truncated by Planet PHP, read more at the original (another 14678 bytes)
Since 
As the days are rapidly getting shorter, my reading appetite grows potentially and this evening I finished the 'Zend Framework 1.8 Web Application Development' book written by 