Twitter Timeline Error

Hi Derek, thanks for your prompt reply.

I had applied the fix and cleared my caches. The problem occurs when twitter is down. LissaKay’s twitter timeline also wasn’t working when the site was down and is working now (as is mine, without further intervention).

Part of the problem is that it seems to “break” my template html when Twitter is down. In my case it only occurs when I’m logged on (perhaps it’s the debugging error messages?). However looking at LissaKay’s site yesterday, I most certainly wasn’t logged in and it seemed to “break” her layout too.

The statistic appeared on the Twitter forums - yes, it is the accumulated time they were down over the past 12 months (allegedly).

The output of the Twitter Timeline plugin when Twitter was down was as follows (at both my site and LissaKay’s):

profile image
~ 7 years, 5 months, 3 weeks, 3 days, 18 hours, 59 minutes ago

profile image
~ 7 years, 5 months, 3 weeks, 3 days, 18 hours, 59 minutes ago

The template debugging messages were as per LissaKay’s post above.

What are the contents of your Twitter Timeline cache file at that point, bigblue? It shouldn’t be making it to variable parsing unless a valid, tweet-filled XML response is received.

Mmm. Next time it happens I’ll let you know. I didn’t keep a copy.

OK, here goes.

Here’s the error messages first:

Notice: Undefined index: user in /home/system/plugins/pi.twitter_timeline.php on line 197

Notice: Undefined index: created_at in /home/system/plugins/pi.twitter_timeline.php on line 259

Notice: Undefined offset: 1 in /home/system/plugins/pi.twitter_timeline.php on line 519

Notice: Undefined offset: 0 in /home/system/plugins/pi.twitter_timeline.php on line 520

Notice: Undefined offset: 5 in /home/system/plugins/pi.twitter_timeline.php on line 522

Notice: Undefined offset: 2 in /home/system/plugins/pi.twitter_timeline.php on line 522

Notice: Undefined offset: 3 in /home/system/plugins/pi.twitter_timeline.php on line 522

Notice: Undefined index: user in /home/system/plugins/pi.twitter_timeline.php on line 197

Notice: Undefined index: created_at in /home/system/plugins/pi.twitter_timeline.php on line 259

Notice: Undefined offset: 1 in /home/system/plugins/pi.twitter_timeline.php on line 519

Notice: Undefined offset: 0 in /home/system/plugins/pi.twitter_timeline.php on line 520

Notice: Undefined offset: 5 in /home/system/plugins/pi.twitter_timeline.php on line 522

Notice: Undefined offset: 2 in /home/system/plugins/pi.twitter_timeline.php on line 522

Notice: Undefined offset: 3 in /home/system/plugins/pi.twitter_timeline.php on line 522

And here are the contents of the cache:

And this is what gets “twittered”:

7 years, 5 months, 3 weeks, 4 days, 15 hours, 28 minutes ago
7 years, 5 months, 3 weeks, 4 days, 15 hours, 28 minutes ago

The variables seem to be all blank, so the links (that I configured) are all to:

http://twitter.com//statuses/

Odd, it shouldn’t be parsing that as XML, bigblue, it should be failing and returning an empty string, and logging the message “Twitter Timeline error: Unable to retreive statuses from Twitter.com”. Following the conditional on line 127 that reads:

if (($xml_obj = $XML->parse_xml($rawxml)) === FALSE)
{
    $TMPL->log_item("Twitter Timeline error: Unable to retreive statuses from Twitter.com");
    $this->return_data = '';
    return;
}

Can you add:

echo '<pre>';print_r($xml_obj);echo'</pre>

<p>’;

And then cut and paste the output? If the service is connecting successfully, overwriting the contents of your cache file manually with what you have above (except the first line, the timestamp) should force a triggering of these errors you are receving.

This is the output:

Notice:  Undefined variable:  xml_obj in /home/system/plugins/pi.twitter_timeline.php on line 103

Followed by the other debugging messages.

Double check that you are placing it after the right conditional, it should be after the one on line 127 displayed above.

OK, maybe I had it in the wrong place because this looks more like what you are expecting. I have attached it as a file because it is too big to post here.

Unusual, with that source, both systems I am testing on still return FALSE on attempting to parse it.

At any rate, this should solve the problem so long as Twitter keeps sending HTML content when the API is down. Please give it a try and let me know, at your convenience; this is a long weekend afterall. :-D

Hi Derek,

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you.

I implemented the change, but I also did another adjustment. I entered “-60” into the server offset parameter in the control panel. (I had noticed that the time of my posts in the twitter timeline was incorrect).

Now I don’t get the error, and when Twitter is down the timeline is simply blank.

cheers, BBM

Excellent, I’ll get the add-on updated today then, BBM. Incidentally, if you had to move the server offset by a full hour, it sounds like either your server timezone, daylight saving setting, or your user’s localization settings for one of those values is off.

Since twitter is down, yet again, I’ve been having problems with it failing and displaying ugly error messages. I looked at the twitter plugin code, and echo’d the $rawxml data and saw that the plugin wasn’t parsing it correctly.

Being the lazy coder I am, I opted to just search for the “</error>” xml closing tag, and if it finds it, just return an error and stop further processing from the plugin. Below is my code (inserted after line 96 of pi.twitter_timeline.php):

if (preg_match("/(<\\/error>)/is", $rawxml)) { 
        $TMPL->log_item("Twitter is down.");
        $this->return_data = 'Twitter is down, again.';
        return;
      }

Twitter error message:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<error reason="temporary maintenance" deadline="30 minutes">
  Twitter is down for temporary maintenance. It will return in 30 minutes.
</error>

Have you updated the plugin, Arbinshire? It checks for the <error> response now.

I did and I was still getting error messages throw. I think around lines 133/135 and lines 300.