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POPHP: How to use the Twitter API's data to convert URLs, mentions, and hastags in tweets to links?
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copied!<p>I'm really stumped on how Twitter expects users of its API to convert the plaintext tweets it sends to properly linked HTML.</p> <p>Here's the deal: Twitter's JSON API sends this set of information back when you request the detailed data for a tweet:</p> <pre><code>{ "created_at":"Wed Jul 18 01:03:31 +0000 2012", "id":225395341250412544, "id_str":"225395341250412544", "text":"This is a test tweet. #boring @nbc http://t.co/LUfDreY6 #skronk @crux http://t.co/VpuMlaDs @twitter", "source":"web", "truncated":false, "in_reply_to_status_id":null, "in_reply_to_status_id_str":null, "in_reply_to_user_id":null, "in_reply_to_user_id_str":null, "in_reply_to_screen_name":null, "user": <REDACTED>, "geo":null, "coordinates":null, "place":null, "contributors":null, "retweet_count":0, "entities":{ "hashtags":[ { "text":"boring", "indices":[22,29] }, { "text":"skronk", "indices":[56,63] } ], "urls":[ { "url":"http://t.co/LUfDreY6", "expanded_url":"http://www.twitter.com", "display_url":"twitter.com", "indices":[35,55] }, { "url":"http://t.co/VpuMlaDs", "expanded_url":"http://www.example.com", "display_url":"example.com", "indices":[70,90] } ], "user_mentions":[ { "screen_name":"nbc", "name":"NBC", "id":26585095, "id_str":"26585095", "indices":[30,34] }, { "screen_name":"crux", "name":"Z. D. Smith", "id":407213, "id_str":"407213", "indices":[64,69] }, { "screen_name":"twitter", "name":"Twitter", "id":783214, "id_str":"783214", "indices":[91,99] } ] }, "favorited":false, "retweeted":false, "possibly_sensitive":false } </code></pre> <p>The interesting parts, for this question, are the <code>text</code> element and the entries in the <code>hashtags</code>, <code>user_mentions</code>, and <code>urls</code> arrays. Twitter is telling us where in the <code>text</code> element the hastags, mentions, and urls appear with the <code>indices</code> arrays... so here's the crux of the question:</p> <p>How do you <em>use</em> those <code>indices</code> arrays?</p> <p>You can't just use them straight up by looping over each link element with something like <a href="http://php.net/manual/en/function.substr-replace.php"><code>substr_replace</code></a>, since replacing the first link element in the <code>text</code> will invalidate all the index values for subsequent link elements. You also can't use <a href="http://php.net/manual/en/function.substr-replace.php"><code>substr_replace</code></a>'s array functionality, since it only works when you give it an array of strings for the first arg, rather than a single string (I've tested this. The results are... strange).</p> <p>Is there some function that can simultaneously replace multiple index-delimited substrings in a single string with different replacement strings?</p>

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