14 December 2011

How to get Twitter RSS Feed (Since Twitter started hiding it)

After Twitter changed its user interface from its simple initial design it also decided to hide the public RSS feed which was available on all profiles. Although the RSS feed is no longer visible, the functionality is still fully working.

The URL for an RSS feed looks like this:

http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/101086296.rss

or alternatively with the atom extension:

http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/101086296.atom

The problem that remains is finding the number which corresponds to a Twitter username. You can find out this number by using the Twitter API however there is a website that does this for you. Visit the website below and enter a Twitter username then click "Get ID" and you will be presented with the identification number of that particular Twitter user.

http://www.idfromuser.com/

So all you have to do now is replace that number into this URL (101086296 is my Twitter id):

http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/101086296.atom

and you will have an RSS/Atom feed for any Twitter account.

If you'd like to be updated on new blog posts please subscribe to my RSS feed and/or via email.  I'm also on Twitter @JensonTaylorFacebook and Google+.



24 comments:

  1. This doesn't appear to work...

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  2. So far it has worked with 100% success for me.
    Please post the username and I will give you the URL for it.

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    Replies
    1. how can I get the Feed Address URL of my twitter?

      Delete
  3. Doesn't work for me (scthreeboys) either.

    http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/16156105.atom
    http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/16156105.rss

    ReplyDelete
  4. Mike, I tried validating the link and it says that it validated successfully.

    http://feedvalidator.org/check.cgi?url=http%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Fstatuses%2Fuser_timeline%2F16156105.rss

    ReplyDelete
  5. Mike, I also tried adding the link to my rss program(Google Reader) and it worked perfectly fine.

    What RSS client are you using?

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  6. But how do you get the Rss feed address of an advanced Twitter search? Like one that you can build here? http://search.twitter.com/advanced

    That's what I need ....

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    Replies
    1. I will look into this and get back to you if I find the solution.

      Delete
  7. does not work in IE or Firefox

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    Replies
    1. hmmm... what error message are you receiving? It is possible a certain character such as ampersand can mess up the validity of the RSS xml file.

      Please give me some more details of the error that you are receiving.

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  8. I typed in the username and it returns an empty ID. Doesn't work for me. Can you help please? I need it for news10nbc username. Thanks!!

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    Replies
    1. can you please let me know what your twitter username is?

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  9. thanks for the share. it looks great to use rss feed.

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  10. It doesn´t work for me either, my username is CarinaWJ

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    Replies
    1. Carina, I tried your one and it seems to be working perfectly.

      Here is the URL:
      https://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/14646290.atom

      Delete
  11. Thank you that was usefull

    Worked for me. Still reading annoucements on Twitter API 1.1 I under the impression rss will not be supported after March 2013. To confirm at that time. json should be continued, just replace rss by json as https://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/14506257.json instead of https://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/14506257.xml

    Bruno @ kneaver.com

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  12. For the JSON feed, you can just use the username. https://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/jamesgeldart.json gives you my timeline, and you don't need to be logged in to twitter either.

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  13. https://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/14506257.json

    I copy paste this url to browser, does not work. Any idea?
    Thanks.

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    Replies
    1. It appears that Twitter has disabled this feature so this approach no longer works. Sadly you have to ignore this whole blog post.

      Delete
  14. ok, I've just been trying to copy some of these links into my chrome browser, & I consistently get error code 34. does this really work, with json, xml, or atom?

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  15. I tried copying most of these urls into chrome, & all end up with error code 34. does this actually work with xml, atom, or json? do you require being logged in? this seemed like a quick solution to pulling an an RSS feed in code, but if its not working...

    - O8

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    Replies
    1. It appears that Twitter has disabled this feature so this approach no longer works. Sadly you have to ignore this whole blog post.

      Delete