Twitter4R v0.2.0: Timeline API
Written on 9:06:00 PM by S. Potter
The Timeline API segment of Twitter4R provides access to the REST API that deals with public, friend and [public] user status timelines. For example, to get an Array of statuses representing your own timeline on Twitter all you would need to type was:
gem('twitter', '>=0.2.0')
require('twitter')
client = Twitter::Client.new(:login => 'mylogin', :password => 'mypassword')
timeline = client.timeline_for(:me)
If your timeline is public and you do not need to invoke any authenticated methods, you do not need to pass in login/password credentials to the Twitter::Client constructor, just Twitter::Client.new is all that is needed.
Other than the :me timeline, the following are available:- :public - returns the public timeline on Twitter (last 20 statuses)
- :friends - returns a timeline of all your friends' statuses
- :friend - returns a timeline of one particular friend
- :user - returns timeline of one particular user
Upgrading from 0.1.x
If you are upgrading from Twitter4R v0.1.x you will probably have code that looks similar to the following:
client = Twitter::Client.new(:login => 'mylogin', :password => 'mypassword')
timeline = client.public_timeline
All you will need to do is change the last (second) line above to:
timeline = client.timeline_for(:public)

How far back can I retrieve the timeline of my friends? It seems to be maxing out at around 25 posts, with or without the since argument.
Is there a limit to the number of posts I can retrieve using the friends timeline?
It seems to max out with or without the since parameter.
is there a way to filter public timeline returning only the tweets that i want using a query
Is this available in the Twitter.com REST API yet? Last time I checked you can only use the Search API of Twitter, which is supported in Twitter4R v0.3.3+. It is recommended you use v0.5.0 from now on though and use OAuth as tomorrow HTTP Basic authentication will be discontinued by Twitter.com.
HTH,
Susan