Fetching / formatting / storing tweets to my database

Question

I am periodically getting tweets, formatting them, and storing them into the database. Now the line of code I use for this is an awful lot. I was wondering if this could be improved.

// This is the wordpress way of getting a json object
// Wordpress will determine how the data is going to 
// be fetched looking at what PHP functions are 
// enabled for the user, wget, curl, etc.
$json_body = wp_remote_retrieve_body(
 wp_remote_get(
 'http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/'.$options['username'].'.json?count='.$options['count'] ) );
$tweet = json_decode( $json_body, true );
for( $i = 0; $i < $options['count']; $i++ ){
 $latestTweet = htmlentities($tweet[$i]['text'], ENT_QUOTES);
 $latestTweet = preg_replace('/http:\/\/([a-z0-9_\.\-\+\&\!\#\~\/,円]+)/i', '<a href="http://1ドル" target="_blank">http://1ドル</a>', $latestTweet);
 $latestTweet = preg_replace('/@([a-z0-9_]+)/i', '<a href="http://twitter.com/1ドル" target="_blank">@1ドル</a>', $latestTweet);
 // This array $data will be stored to the DB
 // I will use the *serialize()* function for this.
 $data[] = array( 'text' => $latestTweet, 'time' => timespan( $tweet[$i]['created_at'] ) );
}
function timespan( $a )
{
 //get current timestampt
 $b = strtotime("now");
 //get timestamp when tweet created
 $c = strtotime($a);
 //get difference
 $d = $b - $c;
 //calculate different time values
 $minute = 60;
 $hour = $minute * 60;
 $day = $hour * 24;
 $week = $day * 7;
 if(is_numeric($d) && $d > 0) {
 //if less then 3 seconds
 if($d < 3) return "right now";
 //if less then minute
 if($d < $minute) return floor($d) . " seconds ago";
 //if less then 2 minutes
 if($d < $minute * 2) return "about 1 minute ago";
 //if less then hour
 if($d < $hour) return floor($d / $minute) . " minutes ago";
 //if less then 2 hours
 if($d < $hour * 2) return "about 1 hour ago";
 //if less then day
 if($d < $day) return floor($d / $hour) . " hours ago";
 //if more then day, but less then 2 days
 if($d > $day && $d < $day * 2) return "yesterday";
 //if less then year
 if($d < $day * 365) return floor($d / $day) . " days ago";
 //else return more than a year
 return "over a year ago";
 }
}

Answer 1

wp_remote_get(
 'http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/' 
 . $options['username'].'.json?count='.$options['count'] ) 

I'd use at least a local variable which stores the url:

$url = 'http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/' . 
 $options['username'] . '.json?count=' .$options['count'];
wp_remote_get($url);

A function would be more better. It makes the code easier to read.

---

Use longer variable names to avoid comments:

function timespan($create_time_input)
{
 $current_timestamp = strtotime("now");
 $create_time = strtotime($create_time_input);
 $diff_seconds = $current_timestamp - $create_time;
 $one_minute = 60;
 $one_hour = $one_minute * 60;
 $one_day = $one_hour * 24;
 $one_week = $day * 7;
 if(is_numeric($d) && $d > 0) {
 if ($diff_seconds < 3) {
 return "right now";
 }
 if ($diff_seconds < $one_minute) {
 return floor($diff_seconds) . " seconds ago";
 }
...

Now the code itself says what the comments said before.

---

Unnecessary floor:

if($d < $minute) return floor($d) . " seconds ago";

$d looks an integer, so floor is unnecessary.

• Saif Bechan: Glad you took the time to comment here. Point one I am going to use, it does make it all a little more readable when different variables are used. I will also change the names, gives a better look. Will also remove the floor method. Too bad no comments about the working of the script itself. The preg_replace and time function are really bugging me. Thanks for the readability pointers. +1
• palacsint: You are welcome :) Yes, the preg_replace code is not an easy task, it's worth to extract it to a separate function at least.