Caching a simple API call using the WP Transient API

transient-example.php

<?php

//let's get some tweets!!

//first, let's see if I've got the data already cached
$tweets = get_transient("tweets"); 
  
  //dang it! it looks like I might not. let's grab some tweets from the Twitter API
  if( !$tweets ) {  

    $json = wp_remote_retrieve_body( wp_remote_get('http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.json?include_entities=true&include_rts=true&screen_name=clarklab&count=5') );
    $tweets = json_decode($json, true);

    //if the Twitter API gave us some tweets, let's save them!      
    //in a field named "tweets", we'll save our $tweets, for 15 minutes (60 seconds x 15 minutes)
    set_transient('tweets', $tweets, 60 * 15);

  }
  
// now you can do stuff with your returned (or cached) data!
if ($tweets){ 
    
  foreach ($tweets as $tweet) {
   // do stuff
  }
}

?>