get_tweets.php

#!/usr/bin/php
<?php

if (! isset($argv[1]))
  exit("Provide a Twitter screen name\n");
else
  $screen_name = $argv[1];

$file = $screen_name.'_tweets.txt';

$fh = fopen($file,'a');

$url = "http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline.xml?".
       "screen_name={$screen_name}&count=200&page=";

$iterator = 1;
$brake = false;

do {
  $xml = @simplexml_load_file($url.$iterator);

  if (! $xml)
    exit("Couldn't load ". ($iterator > 1 ? 'more ' : 'any ') ."tweets.\n");

  foreach ( $xml->children() as $child )
    fwrite($fh, serialize($child)."\n");

  $iterator++;

  if ( count($xml->children()) < 200 ) $brake = true;

} while ( !$brake );

fclose($fh);

echo "Wrote as many tweets as I could to {$file}.\n";

if ( filesize($file) == 0 ) unlink($file);