Chapter 3. Web Programming Basics

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kmakice Feeling a little shaky about the whole coding thing? Take a crash course in the languages you will use to build your Twitter app.

As demonstrated in the first two chapters, Twitter is a rich playground for both members and developers. Before we get into specifics on how you can join in the fun, we should spend some time reviewing the mechanics of working with the languages you will be asked to use to build your new Twitter web application.

This chapter provides an overview of the basic knowledge and tools needed to create the applications described later in the book. Although the API can be used to create desktop and mobile applications as well, this book focuses on the web platform built with PHP and MySQL. Even for experienced programmers, it won’t hurt to skim this chapter so you understand the scope of what is to come. However, if you are confident in your skills with XML, CSS, PHP, and MySQL, you can skip to Chapter 4 and jump right into the methods available in the Twitter API.

Note

This chapter reflects what is needed to build and install the suite of sample applications to get you started using the Twitter API. It is not meant to be a replacement for resources dedicated to improving individual skill sets for XHTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL, or server management. Suggested reading on those topics can be found at the end of this chapter.

XHTML

The ...

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