Twitter Parsing

/// For caching in a database; Use as a CRON

function getTweets($user, $num = 3) {
    //first, get the user's timeline
    $ch = curl_init();
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/$user.json?count=$num");
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
    $json = curl_exec($ch);
    curl_close($ch);

    if ($json === false) { return false; } //abort on error

    //second, convert the resulting json into PHP
    $result = json_decode($json);

    //third, build up the html output
    $s = '';
    foreach ($result as $item) {
        //handle any special characters
        $text = htmlentities($item->text, ENT_QUOTES, 'utf-8');

        //build the metadata part
        $meta = date('g:ia M jS', strtotime($item->created_at)) . ' from ' . $item->source;

        //parse the tweet text into html
        $text = preg_replace('@(https?://([-\w\.]+)+(/([\w/_\.]*(\?\S+)?(#\S+)?)?)?)@', '<a href="$1">$1</a>', $text);
        $text = preg_replace('/@(\w+)/', '<a href="http://twitter.com/$1">@$1</a>', $text);
        $text = preg_replace('/\s#(\w+)/', ' <a href="http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23$1">#$1</a>', $text);

        //assemble everything
        $s .= '<p class="tweet">' . $text . "<br />\n" . '<span class="tweet-meta">' . $meta . "</span></p>\n";
    }

    return $s;
}


// Regex for replacing links,users, and hashtags

$status = $cb->statuses_userTimeline($params); // Using codebird
foreach( $status as $stat):
if($stat->text){
  $text = $stat->text;
  // Twitter Links
  $text = preg_replace('@(https?://([-\w\.]+)+(/([\w/_\.]*(\?\S+)?(#\S+)?)?)?)@', '<a href="$1">$1</a>', $text);
  // Twitter Users
  $text = preg_replace('/@(\w+)/', '<a href="http://twitter.com/$1">@$1</a>', $text);
  // Twitter Hashtags
  $text = preg_replace('/\s+#(\w+)/', ' <a href="http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23$1">#$1</a>', $text);

  echo $text;
}