Question: Is the only way to get the follower count number in plain text is using cURL? or does the twitter API provides any such option?

Answer: 
<https://api.twitter.com/1/users/lookup.json?screen_name=tvdw> (my profile, just replace the screen name)

Also available as XML: <https://api.twitter.com/1/users/lookup.xml?screen_name=tvdw>

Obtaining it in PHP:

```
$data = json_decode(file_get_contents('https://api.twitter.com/1/users/lookup.json?screen_name=tvdw'), true);
echo $data[0]['followers_count'];

```
> 
> Twitter API 1.0 is deprecated and is no longer active. With the REST 1.1 API, you need oAuth authentication to retrieve data from Twitter.
> 
> 
> 

Use this instead:

```
<?php
    require_once('TwitterAPIExchange.php'); //get it from https://github.com/J7mbo/twitter-api-php

    /** Set access tokens here - see: https://dev.twitter.com/apps/ **/
    $settings = array(
        'oauth_access_token' => "YOUR_OAUTH_ACCESS_TOKEN",
        'oauth_access_token_secret' => "YOUR_OAUTH_ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET",
        'consumer_key' => "YOUR_CONSUMER_KEY",
        'consumer_secret' => "YOUR_CONSUMER_SECRET"
    );

    $ta_url = 'https://api.twitter.com/1.1/statuses/user_timeline.json';
    $getfield = '?screen_name=REPLACE_ME';
    $requestMethod = 'GET';
    $twitter = new TwitterAPIExchange($settings);
    $follow_count=$twitter->setGetfield($getfield)
    ->buildOauth($ta_url, $requestMethod)
    ->performRequest();
    $data = json_decode($follow_count, true);
    $followers_count=$data[0]['user']['followers_count'];
    echo $followers_count;
?>

```