The Twitter API is very unorganized, everything is in obscure formats that need to be converted into something that can easily be worked with.
The Date stamp returned on all tweets is in a format that is not easily search able through a database, or compared to.

Here is a simple method that will convert the Twitter time string to a unix timestamp:

 
  public long twitterStampToTimestamp(String twitterStamp){
    long timestamp = 0;
    try {
      DateFormat formatter ;
      Date date;
      formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("EEE MMM d kk:mm:ss Z yyyy");
      date = (Date)formatter.parse(twitterStamp);
      java.sql.Timestamp timeStampDate = new Timestamp(date.getTime());
      timestamp = date.getTime() / 1000;
    } catch (Exception e){e.printStackTrace();}
    return timestamp;
  }
 

That should help anyone who needs to convert the twitter timestamp to a unix timestamp in Java.

Also, this can easily be adapted to other languages, as the main structure is found in the Date format: "EEE MMM d kk:mm:ss Z yyyy"

Another method I needed for my Twitter Client I am developing was a way to parse the tweets. By this, I mean make links, hashtags and usernames clickable.

I did this using Regex.
To make use of the regex library, you will need to import:

 
import java.util.regex.*;
 

Here is the full code, pass in the tweet, and it will return the tweet with the proper linking.

 
  public String parseTweet(String inTweet){
    String patternStr = "(?:\\s|\\A)[##]+([A-Za-z0-9-_]+)";
    Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile(patternStr);
    Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(inTweet);
    String foundValue = "";
    //hash tags
    while (matcher.find()){
      foundValue = matcher.group();
      foundValue = foundValue.replace(" ","");
      inTweet = inTweet.replace(foundValue, "<a href='http://search.twitter.com/search?q=" + foundValue + "'>" + foundValue + "</a>");
    }
 
    //Users
    patternStr = "(?:\\s|\\A)[@]+([A-Za-z0-9-_]+)";
    pattern = Pattern.compile(patternStr);
    matcher = pattern.matcher(inTweet);
    while (matcher.find()){
      foundValue = matcher.group();
      foundValue = foundValue.replace(" ","");
      String rawName = foundValue.replace("@","");
      inTweet = inTweet.replace(foundValue, "<a href='http://twitter.com/" + rawName + "'>" + foundValue + "</a>");
    }
 
    //links
    patternStr = "(^|[ \t\r\n])((ftp|http|https|mailto|aim|webcal|skype):(([A-Za-z0-9$_.+!*(),;/?:@&~=-])|%[A-Fa-f0-9]{2}){2,}(#([a-zA-Z0-9][a-zA-Z0-9$_.+!*(),;/?:@&~=%-]*))?([A-Za-z0-9$_+!*();/?:~-]))";
    pattern = Pattern.compile(patternStr);
    matcher = pattern.matcher(inTweet);
    while (matcher.find()){
      foundValue = matcher.group();
      foundValue = foundValue.replace(" ","");
      inTweet = inTweet.replace(foundValue, "<a href='" + foundValue + "' target='_blank'>" + foundValue + "</a>");
    }
    return inTweet;
  }
 

And thats it! One method to handle everything.

Wow, It has been such a long time since I made a post here!
I am going to try and start posting more often instead of letting this blog die out.

I have been developing my own Twitter client, and I needed a simple way to access elements from an XML document. Unlike PHP, Java can not use strings as array indexes, so I took the route of maps. I made this class to convert an XML file to a Map, where you can access the individual elements by using the key name. This is ONLY useful if the XML document only has one set of elements, as they will be overwritten.

You need the Org.Json library from http://www.json.org/java/ for this to work.

 
import java.util.*;
import javax.xml.parsers.*;
import org.w3c.dom.*;
import org.xml.sax.*;
import org.json.*;
import java.io.*;
public class XMLToMap{
  String inXML;
  public XMLToMap(String inXML){
    this.inXML = inXML;
  }
  public Map toMap(){
    Map<String, String> xmlmap = new HashMap<String, String>();
    ByteArrayInputStream bs = new ByteArrayInputStream(this.inXML.getBytes());
    try {
      DocumentBuilderFactory dbf = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
      DocumentBuilder db = dbf.newDocumentBuilder();
      Document doc = db.parse(bs);
      doc.getDocumentElement().normalize();
      NodeList mainNode = (NodeList)doc.getDocumentElement();
      Node fstNode = (Node)mainNode;
      NodeList list = ((Element)fstNode).getElementsByTagName("*");
      Element fstNmElmnt;
      String elementValue = "";
      for (int i=0; i
<list.getLength(); i++) {
        Element element = (Element)list.item(i);
        try{
          fstNmElmnt = (Element) ((NodeList)((Element)fstNode).getElementsByTagName(element.getNodeName())).item(0);
          elementValue = ((Node) fstNmElmnt.getChildNodes().item(0)).getNodeValue();
          xmlmap.put(element.getNodeName(), elementValue);
        }catch(Exception e){}
      }
    } catch (Exception e) {
      e.printStackTrace();
    }
    return xmlmap;
  }
}
 

How do you use it?
Declare a new XMLToMap object and pass the full XML document to the constructor.

 
XMLToMap xmlmap = new XMLToMap(fullXMLDocument);
 

Then call tomap and place the data back into a map object, and then you can access whatever elements you need:

 
Map mymap = xmlmap.toMap();
System.out.println(mymap.get("id"));
 

Now, I am sure this can be implemented in a much cleaner way, but it worked perfectly in this way for what I needed it for.

I just came across this where you can get a free $1000 Best Buy gift card. Check it out: Free Best Buy Gift Card.

Here is a simple function to download a file in PHP and save it on your web server. I needed this for another project, so I coded it and decided to post it up here!
The $file variable is the url to the file
And the $savefile variable is where it should be saved on the server (path and file name)

 
function get_file($file, $savefile)
{
    $out = fopen($savefile, 'wb');
    if ($out == FALSE){
      print "Error opening file<br>";
      exit;
    }
 
    $ch = curl_init();
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FILE, $out);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $file);
    curl_exec($ch);
    echo curl_error ( $ch);
    curl_close($ch);
}
 

This is just an update to let you know that my new blog, as previously discussed is now up!

As I mentioned before, I will be writing about how I make money online to allow you to do the same with ease. Most people that make money online are not programmers, which is why I have an advantage. I create tools to make things easier, i'm lazy, I like to make things easy. Both blogs will be tied together, Bncapps and Brandon Blogs. Programming stays on this side, the rest is on the new site.

So check it out! Read the Welcome Post to find out what's to come! As stated in the welcome post, I am still working on the layout and design, so it wont look all that nice at this moment, but it will soon!

http://BrandonBlogs.com

I have had next to no time recently to post here! Hopefully I can find some time to continue posting up programming tutorials.

I just want to announce that I plan on launching a blog on how I personally make money online. I am fairly young (just turned 18 last month), yet I am making quite a bit of money each month for doing things I find fun. I'm sure what I make is way more than any part time job I could get...and each month its up and up.

When it's up, you all will be the first to know. I will talk about making money through Adsense (And if you follow me on twitter you may have seen my recent tweets about the record days), through affiliates, through Twitter, freelancing and many more methods.

Keep reading, follow me on twitter, subscribe to the feed to be the first to hear about it and get in quick!

Exclusive tools that have never been before released will be released on the new site to assist you in making money online with the least amount of work!

I got ahold of 3 new play-Asia.com coupons, each one is one use only.
First one: CM-EQZ-LNE
This is for $5 off of orders $50 or more

The next two: