Media entities not showing on most returned tweets

[JackAHarding]

Hi, I’m using TwitterOAuth and search/tweets to pull images from a Twitter profile and display them in a gallery. However, the media entity isn’t displaying for most of the tweets. Here’s the code I’ve used:

<?php
				require 'includes/twitteroauth/autoload.php';
				use Abraham\TwitterOAuth\TwitterOAuth;
				$connection = new TwitterOAuth($consumerKey,$consumerSecret,$accessToken,$accessTokenSecret);
				$tweets = $connection->get('search/tweets', array('q'=>'from:JackAHarding filter:images','result_type'=>'mixed','count'=>24,'include_entities'=>true));
				?>
				<div class="gallery-container">
					<?php foreach ($tweets->statuses as $tweet) : ?>
						<?php //echo '<pre>';print_r($tweet);echo '</pre>'; ?>
						<div class="gallery-item" style="background-image: url('<?php echo $tweet->entities->media['0']->media_url; ?>')">
							<a title="<?php echo $tweet->text; ?>" href="<?php echo $tweet->entities->media['0']->expanded_url; ?>" target="_blank"></a>
						</div>
					<?php endforeach; ?>
				</div>

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks.

[JackAHarding]

Interestingly, the media entity is available for all of my tweets from my personal Twitter. However, when I use NASA, or the handle I actually need this for, it only shows one or two.

[andypiper]

Try adding the tweet_mode=extended parameter to your API call.

[JackAHarding]

Thanks very much Andy! Any that weren’t still showing were now available under retweeted_status.

However, this has unearthed a new problem - I’ve used ‘count’=>24 which works fine with NASA. However, only a few tweets are being returned for certain handles, for example using Bas Rutten’s handle, only three display when I can see he has many more tweets with images than that on his profile. This is my code:

$tweets = $connection->get('search/tweets', array('q'=>'from:BasRuttenMMA filter:images','result_type'=>'recent','tweet_mode'=>'extended','count'=>24,'include_entities'=>true));

Many thanks.

[andypiper]

From a quick look, a lot of the images showing on that profile page come from cards (i.e. a URL was shared in the Tweet, and the image comes from the website behind it). Search only goes back 7 days. I haven’t checked to see how many Tweets with attached images there are for that handle within that period, but this could explain what you’re seeing.

[JackAHarding]

Thanks Andy. That would explain it, I didn’t realise it only went back 7 days. Is there an alternative method I can use to retrieve more than that?

[When2plus2is5]

Using statuses/user_timeline can get up to 3200 of the most recent tweets from a specific user. Seeing as how you’re looking at individual users, this will probably be your best option.

https://dev.twitter.com/rest/reference/get/statuses/user_timeline

[JackAHarding]

That’s great, thanks! Do you know if there is a way to use this and still filter for images only?

[andypiper]

No, you would need to filter them inside your own code (if JSON object contains extended entities then keep, else ignore)

[TorkHuy]

very thank