> Hey all,
> Like I said in my previous post, what I'm trying to do is essentially
> create a site that lists my "friends_timeline." With that account, I'm
> following a group of individuals in a particular industry.

> Instead of hitting the Twitter server each time, I'm attempting to
> store friends' tweets in a MySQL database and then display them to
> visitors with PHP.

> So, first off, I managed to authenticate and pull down the XML just
> fine with curl.

> As a test, I've stripped the data I want out and am printing it.

> --------------------------------------------------------
> //print XML data (temporary)
> $xml = simplexml_load_string ($str);
> foreach ($xml->status as $status) {
>        print $status->created_at . "<br />\n"; //timestamp
>        print $status->text . "<br />\n"; //body
>        print $status->favorited . "<br />\n"; //favorited (returns true or
> false)
>        print $status->user->name . "<br />\n"; //user's real name
>        print $status->user->description . "<br />\n"; //user's description
>        print $status->user->profile_image_url . "<br />\n"; //location of
> user's profile pic
>        print $status->user->url . "<br />\n"; //user's homepage
>        print $status->id . "<br /><br />\n"; //tweet single id
> }
> --------------------------------------------------------

> And that works just fine.

> For the next step, I've created a database and set up its table
> structure to match the XML data.

> Each line below represents a column in the table. For readability,
> I've matched the XML data I've stripped from "friends_timeline" to
> what I set up as its corresponding column in the database.
> --------------------------------------------------------
> //auto increment id (not matched with XML) (int)
> //created_at -> time (text)
> //text -> body (text)
> //favorited -> favorited (enum)
> //name -> name (text)
> //description -> description (text)
> //profile_image_url -> avatar (text)
> //url -> url (text)
> //id -> twitterid (int)
> --------------------------------------------------------

> Now, the part I'm stuck on: (1) I'm not sure how to get that XML data
> into my database. Do I have to pass it through an array first? Do I
> have to convert it to strings, or have I done that already with "$xml
> = simplexml_load_string ($str)"?

> The other issue I'm not sure about: (2) When a visitor comes to the
> site, he'll see a "friends_timeline" from the data in the database,
> not directly from twitter's servers. But how do I keep pulling data
> from the XML feed and load it into the database automatically? And
> what's a good interval to repeat

> After the data starts populating my database, I don't think I'll have
> too much trouble writing queries to display the content. But I'll
> cross that bridge when I come to it. :D

> I know this isn't explicitly a twitter API question, and I hope its
> not out of place here. But any advice is appreciated. And sorry for
> any improper terminology or poor explanations; as you can probably
> tell, my web coding acumen isn't extensive.

> Thanks in advance for the help!

> --Alex