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How to find Twitter RSS feed URLs

A simple method for accessing yours (or someone else’s) Twitter RSS feed.

Update (18 June 2013): Twitter have closed support for RSS. This information is retained for archival purposes only.

 

There are many reasons why you may require the URL for a Twitter RSS feed.

Twitter used to support this function by including an RSS feed link on users pages. When Twitter was redesigned the links were removed including within the profile page metadata (ie. the <link> element in the <head>).

The good news is that Twitter feeds are still working and there are two easy methods for determining your RSS feed address.

Method 1: Direct RSS Feed Access

All Twitter RSS feeds are accessible via a URL in the following format:

https://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/(account-ID).rss

In order to access yours (or anyone else’s) feed, you will need to determine their user ID number via IDfromUser.com. Simply enter the account user name and the account ID will be revealed.

So, for example, my username is “AdamDimech”. By entering “AdamDimech” into IDfromUser.com, the following ID is provided: 33342767.

In the example above, (account-ID) is substituted for 33342767 and therefore my Twitter RSS feed URL is https://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/33342767.rss

Method 2: User-Timeline RSS via Twitter API

An alternative (but identical) Twitter RSS feed can be accessed via the Twitter API. The address will have the following format:

https://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.rss?screen_name=UserName

Simply substitute “UserName” with the user name of the account. Using my own account as an example of this format, my Twitter RSS feed URL is https://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.rss?screen_name=AdamDimech

The API can be used to retrieve the RSS feed in either .rss or .json format by adding specific query strings to the URL which takes the format:

https://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.format?parameter1=Value&parameter2=Value

The full documentation for the user_timeline API-based RSS feeds is available from the Twitter Developers website. As an example of usage, I can call my Twitter RSS feed to show just 12 tweets by requesting the following URL:

https://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.rss?screen_name=AdamDimech&count=12

For AJAX applications, the JSON format would be:

https://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.json?screen_name=AdamDimech&count=12

It should be remembered that for a URL <a href> link to be valid in XHTML 1.0 (Strict or Transitional) and HTML5, question marks and ampersands should converted into valid HTML codes. Thus the markup for above link would be:

My RSS Feed
   

Comments

3 responses to “How to find Twitter RSS feed URLs”

On 7 August 2011, Daniel wrote: Hyperlink chain icon

Speaking of RSS, any chance of you rejigging your blog so the images are visible from Google Reader?

Reply

    On 7 August 2011, Adam Dimech wrote: Hyperlink chain icon

    Hi Daniel, I thought I had fixed it! (I believe it’s caused by my server’s hotlink protection). I shall take another look into it to make sure.

    Reply

On 24 October 2012, ssepiro wrote: Hyperlink chain icon

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