Create your own twitter image signature

Many days ago I built two image signatures as my forum signature. One of the signatures shows the latest post from my blog and another shows my latest twitter update. I was inspired to do that signature by seeing Shiplu Vai’s signature. Originally he was using them and I copied the concept :D

Anyway, here is my latest blog post signature and here is my twitter signature

I will show you the process to create your own twitter image signature like me.

1. At first we will get the latest twitter update by this

$username = "tareq_cse"; //Twitter Username
$url      = "http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/$username.json?count=1"; //json request url
$json     = json_decode( file_get_contents( $url ) );
$status   = $json[0]->text; //get the status from array/object

2. Now we will get the time distance from now and the twitted time and will format it

$tweeted  = strtotime( $json[0]->created_at ); //get the time as timestamp
$diff     = time() - $tweeted; //get the time difference

//Get the time distance
if ( $diff > 86400 ) {
    $diff = round( $diff / (60 * 60 * 24) );

    if ( $diff > 1 )
        $date = "$diff days ago";
    else
        $date = "$diff day ago";

} else if ( $diff > 3599 ) {

    $diff = round( $diff / 3600 );

    if ( $diff > 1 )
        $date = "$diff hours ago";
    else
        $date = "$diff hour ago";

} else {

    $diff = round( $diff / 60 );

    if ( $diff > 1 )
        $date = "$diff minutes ago";
    else
        $date = "$diff minute ago";
}

3. So now we got our formatted twitter text

$status = "Tareq: $status ($date)";

4. Now it’s time to create our image

//Now print as a image
header( "Content-type: image/png" );
$image      = imagecreate( 700, 16 ); //creating a demo image
$background = imagecolorallocate( $image, 255, 255, 255 ); // defining the background of demo image
$textcolor  = imagecolorallocate( $image, rand( 0, 255 ), rand( 0, 255 ), rand( 0, 255 ) ); //random text color
imagestring( $image, 3, 16, 1, $status, $textcolor ); //creating the final image

imagepng( $image );
imagedestroy( $image );

We are done :)

Now run the page and you will get the latest twitter status as an image signature.

So here is the full code

<?php
$username = "tareq_cse"; //Twitter Username
$url      = "http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/$username.json?count=1"; //json request url
$json     = json_decode( file_get_contents( $url ) );
$status   = $json[0]->text; //get the status from array/object
$tweeted  = strtotime( $json[0]->created_at ); //get the time as timestamp
$diff     = time() - $tweeted; //get the time difference

//Get the time distance
if ( $diff > 86400 ) {
    $diff = round( $diff / (60 * 60 * 24) );

    if ( $diff > 1 )
        $date = "$diff days ago";
    else
        $date = "$diff day ago";

} else if ( $diff > 3599 ) {

    $diff = round( $diff / 3600 );

    if ( $diff > 1 )
        $date = "$diff hours ago";
    else
        $date = "$diff hour ago";

} else {

    $diff = round( $diff / 60 );

    if ( $diff > 1 )
        $date = "$diff minutes ago";
    else
        $date = "$diff minute ago";
}

$status = "Tareq: $status ($date)";

//Now print as a image
header( "Content-type: image/png" );
$image      = imagecreate( 700, 16 ); //creating a demo image
$background = imagecolorallocate( $image, 255, 255, 255 ); // defining the background of demo image
$textcolor  = imagecolorallocate( $image, rand( 0, 255 ), rand( 0, 255 ), rand( 0, 255 ) ); //random text color
imagestring( $image, 3, 16, 1, $status, $textcolor ); //creating the final image

imagepng( $image );
imagedestroy( $image );

Hope you enjoyed the post :D