Example of Twitter access class encapsulated in PHP, _PHP tutorial

class Twitter {
 /**
  * Method to make twitter api call for the users timeline in XML
  *
  * @access private
  * @param $twitter_id, $num_of_tweets
  * @return $xml
  */
 private function api_call($twitter_id, $num_of_tweets) {
  $c = curl_init();
  curl_setopt($c, CURLOPT_URL, "http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/$twitter_id.xml?count=$num_of_tweets");
  curl_setopt($c, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
  curl_setopt($c, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, 3);
  curl_setopt($c, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 5);
  $response  = curl_exec($c);
  $response_info = curl_getinfo($c);
  curl_close($c);
  if (intval($response_info['http_code']) == 200) {
   $xml = new SimpleXMLElement($response);
   return $xml;
  } else {
   return false;
  }
 }
 /**
  * Method to add hyperlink html tags to any urls, twitter ids or hashtags in tweet
  *
  * @access private
  * @param $text
  * @return $text
  */
 private function process_links($text) {
  $text = utf8_decode($text);
  $text = preg_replace('@(https&#63;://([-\w\.]+)+(d+)&#63;(/([\w/_\.]*(\&#63;\S+)&#63;)&#63;)&#63;)@', '<a href="$1">$1</a>', $text);
  $text = preg_replace("#(^|[\n ])@([^ \"\t\n\r<]*)#ise", "'\\1<a href=\"http://www.twitter.com/\\2\" >@\\2</a>'", $text);
  $text = preg_replace("#(^|[\n ])\#([^ \"\t\n\r<]*)#ise", "'\\1<a href=\"http://hashtags.org/search&#63;query=\\2\" >#\\2</a>'", $text);
  return $text;
 }
 /**
  * Main method to retrieve the tweets and return html for display
  *
  * @access public
  * @param $twitter_id, $num_of_tweets, $timezone
  * @return $result
  */
 public function get_tweets($twitter_id, $num_of_tweets = 3, $timezone = "America/Denver") {
  $include_replies = false;
  date_default_timezone_set($timezone);
  // the html markup
  $cont_o  = "<div id=\"tweets\">\n";
  $tweet_o = "<div class=\"status\">\n";
  $tweet_c = "</div>\n\n";
  $detail_o = "<div class=\"details\">\n";
  $detail_c = "</div>\n\n";
  $cont_c  = "</div>\n";
  if ($twitter_xml = $this->api_call($twitter_id, $num_of_tweets)) {
   $result  = $cont_o;
   foreach ($twitter_xml->status as $key => $status) {
    if ($include_replies == true | substr_count($status->text, "@") == 0 | strpos($status->text, "@") != 0) {
     $tweet = $this->process_links($status->text);
     $result .= $tweet_o . $tweet . $tweet_c . $detail_o . date('D jS M y H:i', strtotime($status->created_at)) . $detail_c;
    }
   }
   $result  .= $cont_c;
  } else {
   $result  .= $cont_o . $tweet_o . "Twitter seems to be unavailable at the moment." . $tweet_c . $cont_c;
  }
  return $result;
 }
}