Automatically Post Job Listings to Twitter from Jobberbase

Posted at 4:47 PM on December 1st, 2008

AllDevJobs.com

Want to post new jobs to popular micro-blogging service Twitter? Of course you do. Follow the tutorial below to make your Jobberbase site almost as cool as AllDevJobs.com.



To avoid conflicting with newer versions of Jobberbase, I am writing this tutorial for any version so it should always work. As always, make sure you back up your site before you proceed with the following changes.

Step 1: Create a Twitter Account

This may seem obvious, but yes, you need to create a new account. Create Account »

Step 2: Modify config.php

In the root directory of your Jobberbase installation, you have a ‘config.php’ file. In that file you will want to add your Twitter account information. I added mine at line 41. The bolded text indicates the places you need to add your account info.

/* Twitter username & password */
define('TWITTER_ENABLED',1);
define('TWITTER_USERNAME','username_goes_here');
define('TWITTER_PASSWORD','password_goes_here');

After that’s done, you also need to add a reference to the Twitter function you’ll be creating in Step 4. Around line 87, you should see the following:

// Function and classes includes
require_once '_includes/function.validate_email.php';
require_once '_includes/function.redirect_to.php';
require_once '_includes/function.printr.php';
require_once '_includes/function.escape.php';
require_once '_includes/functions.php';
require_once '_includes/class.phpmailer.php';
require_once '_includes/class.Postman.php';
...

You need to add require_once '_includes/function.Twitter.php'; to this list. I added it just after require_once '_includes/functions.php';.

When done, it should look like this:

// Function and classes includes
require_once '_includes/function.validate_email.php';
require_once '_includes/function.redirect_to.php';
require_once '_includes/function.printr.php';
require_once '_includes/function.escape.php';
require_once '_includes/function.Twitter.php';
require_once '_includes/functions.php';
require_once '_includes/class.phpmailer.php';
require_once '_includes/class.Postman.php';
require_once '_includes/class.Textile.php';
require_once '_includes/class.Sanitizer.php';
require_once '_includes/class.Db.php';
require_once '_includes/class.Job.php';
require_once '_includes/class.JobRequest.php';
require_once '_includes/class.Paginator.php';
require_once '_includes/class.Feed.php';
require_once '_includes/class.SpamReport.php';
require_once '_includes/class.Api.php';
require_once '_includes/class.JobApplication.php';
require_once '_includes/class.SearchKeywords.php';
require_once '_includes/smarty/libs/Smarty.class.php';

Step 3: Edit file ‘_includes/class.Job.php’

You will shortly be creating a new Twitter function that will post the job listings for you, however, you need to find the right place to call that function, which would be immediately after the job listing is activated, not necessarily when it’s been posted, because you don’t want people just posting anything to Twitter before you’ve reviewed it.

Around line 873, you’ll need to replace the entire public function Publish() with the following code:


	// Publishes a newly created job post (is_temp => 0)
	public function Publish()
	{
		global $db;
		if ($this->CheckPosterEmail())
		{
			$sql = 'UPDATE jobs SET is_temp = 0, is_active = 1 WHERE id = ' . $this->mId;
			$db->query($sql);

			$sql = 'SELECT type_id, id, title, company FROM jobs WHERE id = ' . $this->mId;
			$result = $db->query($sql);
			$row = $result->fetch_assoc();

		  $formattedMessage = $row['title'] . " at " .$row['company'] . " " . BASE_URL . "job/" .$row['id'] . "/";
		  Tweet($formattedMessage);

		}
		else
		{
			$sql = 'UPDATE jobs SET is_temp = 0, is_active = 0 WHERE id = ' . $this->mId;
			$db->query($sql);
		}

	}

Step 4: Create file ‘_includes/function.Twitter.php’

In your main includes directory, you need to create a new file for the script to post Twitter messages. You will need to have cURL enabled on your server for this to work.

Inside the new file, add this:

<?php
/**
 * Twitter post API
 */

function Tweet($msg){
	if(TWITTER_ENABLED==1){

		$username = TWITTER_USERNAME;
		$password = TWITTER_PASSWORD; 

		$message = $msg;

		$url = 'http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml';
		// Alternative JSON version
		// $url = 'http://twitter.com/statuses/update.json';

		$curl_handle = curl_init();
		curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_URL, "$url");
		curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, 2);
		curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
		curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
		curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, "status=$message");
		curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_USERPWD, "$username:$password");
		$buffer = curl_exec($curl_handle);
		curl_close($curl_handle);
		// check for success or failure
		if (empty($buffer)) {
				echo 'Post failed. Please add listing manually.';
		} else {
				echo 'Success';
		}
	}
}

?>

That’s it. Upload your files and you’re ready to post to Twitter. Please let me know if you have any difficulties with this tutorial and I will update it accordingly.

17 comments so far
  1. stan says:
    December 15, 2008 at 8:18 am

    Cool!

  2. Michele says:
    January 6, 2009 at 6:07 pm

    That’s a really useful tip – thanks for sharing it. I’ll be adding it as soon as I get the new site up and running

  3. ryan says:
    January 11, 2009 at 2:19 pm

    very nice tutorial.

    I am trying to figure out how to make auto posting from RSS to jobberbase. Is it possible?

  4. E.J. Semeijn says:
    January 18, 2009 at 9:51 am

    Hi Chris,
    I’m trying to add this function to my v1.6. Because your code is writen for v1.5 I’m wondering what I need to change. When using the above code I get a blank page after submitting the ad. Can you help me?

  5. Chris says:
    January 18, 2009 at 10:08 am

    You will need to turn error reporting on for PHP and see what error it outputs. If you have trouble implementing this code, you may want to try Twitterfeed, which will essentially post the RSS feed to Twitter, Identi.ca, or Ping.fm, which may be a better solution since it doesn’t hack the core code in Jobberbase.

  6. E.J. Semeijn says:
    January 18, 2009 at 10:15 am

    Thanks for your quick respons! Turned out I made a type error in another includes-file which I hadn’t noticed. In v1.6 I can now post to Twitter.

    You might want to edit this post, because there is a small change in the Publish function (they have moved the sql query).

    Again: thank you very much for the script and your help!

  7. Chris says:
    January 18, 2009 at 10:18 am

    Glad to hear you figured it out. Thanks for mentioning the Publish change as well, I will take a look at that.

  8. E.J. Semeijn says:
    January 19, 2009 at 2:54 pm

    Can I make two feature request?

    Feature request 1: use Tinyurl to shorten url;
    feature request 2: prevent the url from ‘falling off’ when you reach the 140 characters limit.

  9. Chris says:
    January 19, 2009 at 3:51 pm

    You can make all the feature requests you want :)

    I’m not sure I’ll have time to work on this feature, especially since I think twitterfeed is probably an easier way to integrate posting jobs to twitter.

  10. E.J. Semeijn says:
    February 16, 2009 at 5:28 am

    Hi Chris, so far your script is working flawless for one thing. When activating a (first) new job it’s not being posted on Twitter. Do you have the time to fix that (or can you tell me what I should do)?

  11. url for jobs says:
    April 27, 2009 at 1:20 am

    I set up a new url shortener service dedicated for jobs.
    Feel free to get back to me if you want more information. I think it could be interesting to integrate an url shortener in your script to get the most of social networks and get our jobs spreading.

  12. Stavros says:
    May 6, 2009 at 4:49 am

    great tutorial! many many thanks!

    I’m also trying to add it to my jb1.6 and i can’t see the posts. Can you please tell me what I need to change.

    i doubled check the misspellings and the curl is enabled

    thanx again

  13. Bekir Cem says:
    June 14, 2009 at 4:52 am

    Hi.

    I have problem.

    My post url seen on twitter like this: http://ismerkezi.org/admin/job/26/
    How fixed?

  14. 101 Ways to Use Twitter on Campus | Online Colleges says:
    September 14, 2009 at 10:56 pm

    [...] Post job announcements: Post work study, full-time faculty positions and other job announcements on Twitter. [...]

  15. 101 Ways to Use Twitter on Campus - Partytow says:
    September 15, 2009 at 2:00 pm

    [...] Post job announcements: Post work study, full-time faculty positions and other job announcements on Twitter. [...]

  16. Rwin says:
    October 14, 2009 at 2:22 pm

    This add-on works fine on my install of 1.7 and I really like it.

    I have just one question;

    When my new job is posted I get a return page with just the message “Succes”. It is made by the echo statement in the function.Twitter.php file. Is it possible that it will redirect it to my page instead of a blank page with this message?

    Please let me know by e-mail please.

  17. No_limits17 says:
    October 23, 2009 at 5:37 am

    Not necessarily a good idea. ,

Thanks for your interest in commenting, but comments are closed on this topic. However, feel free to send me an @reply on twitter.