How to make a Twitter Application using Windows Phone 7

This article describes how to use the Twitter API and show all tweets on a page using Windows Phone 7.

Getting Started

Creating a Windows Phone Application:

• Open Visual Studio 2010.
• Go to File => New => Project
• Select Silverlight for Windows Phone from the Installed templates and choose Windows Phone Application
• Enter the Name and choose the location.

Click OK.



Image 1.

Add a new class:

public class ItemCollection
    {
        public string UserName { get; set; }
        public string Message { get; set; }
        public string ImageSource { get; set; }
    }

Now add a TextBox, Button and ListBox control on the page.

<Grid x:Name="ContentPanel" Grid.Row="1" Margin="12,0,12,0">
            <TextBox Height="72" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="2,-13,0,0" Name="textBox1" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="254" />
            <Button Content="Find" Height="72" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="247,-13,0,0" Name="findButton" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="160" Click="findButton_Click" />
            <ListBox Height="521" Margin="11,75,-31,0" Name="listBox1" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="476">
                <ListBox.ItemTemplate>
                    <DataTemplate>
                        <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal" Height="132">
                            <Image Source="{Binding ImageSource}" Height="73" Width="73" VerticalAlignment="Top" Margin="0,10,8,0"/>
                            <StackPanel Width="370">
                                <TextBlock Text="{Binding UserName}" Foreground="#FFC8AB14" FontSize="28" />
                                <TextBlock Text="{Binding Message, Mode=OneWay}" TextWrapping="Wrap" FontSize="24" />
                            </StackPanel>
                        </StackPanel>
                    </DataTemplate>
                </ListBox.ItemTemplate>
            </ListBox>
        </Grid>


Code Behind:

public MainPage()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
            SupportedOrientations = SupportedPageOrientation.Portrait | SupportedPageOrientation.Landscape;           
        }

Button click event:

  private void findButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            WebClient wc = new WebClient();
            wc.DownloadStringCompleted += new DownloadStringCompletedEventHandler(wc_DownloadStringCompleted);           
            wc.DownloadStringAsync(new Uri("http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.xml?screen_name=" + textBox1.Text));
        }

        void wc_DownloadStringCompleted(object sender, DownloadStringCompletedEventArgs e)
        {
            if (e.Error != null)
                return;

            XDocument xdoc = XDocument.Parse(e.Result);
            List<ItemCollection> contentList = new List<ItemCollection>();
            foreach (XElement item in xdoc.Elements("statuses").Elements("status"))
            {
                ItemCollection content = new ItemCollection();
                content.UserName = item.Element("user").Element("screen_name").Value;
                content.Message = item.Element("text").Value;
                content.ImageSource = item.Element("user").Element("profile_image_url").Value;
                contentList.Add(content);
            }
            listBox1.Visibility = Visibility.Visible;
            listBox1.ItemsSource = contentList.ToList();
        }

Build and run to see the result.



Image 2.



Image 3.

We are done here with this sample. If you have questions or comments drop me a line in the comments section.