A simple javascript parser for properly displaying a Tweet (e.g. with links) from a Twitter feed

twitter-parser.js

// The parser expects a single node from a twitter feed and returns HTML
// Usage: 
// var tweets = <some array with tweets from an API call>;
// Parse first tweet:
// var tweetHTML = TwitterParser.parseText(tweets[0]);
// console.log(tweetHTML);
(function (window, undefined) {

    function escapeHTML(html) {
        var text = document.createTextNode(html);
        var div = document.createElement('div');
        div.appendChild(text);
        return div.innerHTML;
    }

    function parseText(tweet) {

        if (!(tweet.entities)) {
            return escapeHTML(tweet.text)
        }

        var pieces = tweet.text.split(' ');
        var piecesParsed = [];

        for (var i = 0; i < pieces.length; i++) {
            var piece = pieces[i];

            if (piece.indexOf('@') === 0) {
                var mention = tweet.entities.user_mentions.shift();
                piece = "<a title='" + escapeHTML(mention.name) + "' href='http://twitter.com/" + escapeHTML(mention.screen_name) + "' target='_blank'>" + escapeHTML(piece) + "</a>";
            }
            else if (piece.indexOf('#') === 0) {
                var hashtag = tweet.entities.hashtags.shift();
                piece = "<a href='http://twitter.com/search?q=" + escape("#" + hashtag.text) + "' target='_blank'>" + escapeHTML(piece) + "</a>";
            }
            else if (piece.indexOf('http') === 0) {
                var url = tweet.entities.urls.shift();
                piece = "<a href='" + escapeHTML(url.url) + "' target='_blank'>" + escapeHTML(piece) + "</a>";
            }

            piecesParsed.push(piece);
        };

        return piecesParsed.join(' ');
    };

    window.TwitterParser = {
        parseText: parseText
    };

}(window));