Twitter Search API - PHP multiple word search not working - forms

Question

I have a simple search bar, user types in a search terms and tweets that match the search terms should show up. However, it only works for single word searches.
<div id="search">
<form action="" method="get">
<label>
Search:
<input type="text" name="search_box" id="search_box" />
<input type="submit" name="submit" id="submit" value="Search" />
</label>
</form>
</div>
<?php
$q=$_GET['search_box'];
$search = "http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=".$q."";
$tw = curl_init();
curl_setopt($tw, CURLOPT_URL, $search);
curl_setopt($tw, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, TRUE);
$twi = curl_exec($tw);
$search_res = new SimpleXMLElement($twi);
echo "<h3>Twitter search results for '".$q."'</h3>";
foreach ($search_res->entry as $twit1) {
$description = $twit1->content;
$message = $row['content'];
echo "<div class='text'>".$description."</div><br><br>";
}
curl_close($tw);
?>

Answer 1

If you're searching with quotation marks for exact phrase matches then you need to escape these quotes before constructing your query string. With the current code:
$q = $_GET['q']
$search = "http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=".$q."";
the input "test phrase" will result in this expression (which will probably cause a parse error):
"http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q="test phrase"";
Instead, try urlencoding the user input before including it in the search string:
$q = urlencode($_GET['q']);
$search = "http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q={$q}";
Which should result in the value:
http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=%22test%20phrase%22
You can check that this works by entering the URL in your browser.

Answer 2

Edit:
Here's the best resource for the Twitter Search API: https://dev.twitter.com/docs/using-search
For matching exact phrases, simply wrap the query string in qoutes.
--
In the Twitter API, any phrases are logicals ANDs, while comma separated values are logical ORs.
"Comma separated keywords and phrases are logical ORs, phrases are logical ANDs.
Words within phrases are delimited by spaces. A tweet matches if any phrase matches.
A phrase matches if all of the words are present in the tweet. (e.g. the twitter is the
AND twitter, and the,twitter is the OR twitter.). Terms are exact-matched, and also
exact-matched ignoring punctuation."
This is actually from the Streaming API but I believe that it also applied to the search API (somebody please correct me if I'm wrong!).
Let's consider what this means for a trivial example:
Tweet: "This is a tweet about grapefruit"
Will be matched with query:
tweet
grapefruit
tweet grapefruit
but not with:
pineapple
grapefruit pineapple
If you were searching for tweets wither either "pineapple" or "grapefruit" in, then your query parameter would need to be:
"grapefruit,pineapple".

Answer 3

$q = $_GET['search_box']." is";
$search = "http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=%22".urlencode( $q )."%22";