Comments on Ruby, Javascript, Erlang blog: Snakes, Gems & Coffee: Twitter4R 0.3.1 and the future

looking forward to Oauth

2009-07-21T07:47:33.957-05:00

looking forward to Oauth

Hi Susan. Thanks for the updates to twitter4r. Muc...

2009-07-03T17:21:11.211-05:00

Hi Susan. Thanks for the updates to twitter4r. Much appreciated. I was trying to use the search method, maybe I'm doing something wrong but it is not returning the user object or the username appended to the tweet when show_user is set to true as the twitter search api documentation states.

Here is my code:

twitter.search(:q => "search term here" , :rpp => 10, :show_user => true)

Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Bora

how is the oauth support coming along susan?

2009-06-06T12:30:15.190-05:00

how is the oauth support coming along susan?

Thanks susan! For other people, I thought I woul...

2009-05-24T09:45:43.700-05:00

Thanks susan!

For other people, I thought I would post some links:

http://dagobart.wordpress.com/your-own-twitter-bot/ (based on twitter gem)

http://www.cjohansen.no/en/ruby/twibot_a_microframework_for_twitter_bots_in_ruby (based on wonderful twitter4r gem)

I myself have had trouble getting daemons working with both of these. Meh.

@Darius: Great question. It will really depend on...

2009-05-18T16:03:00.000-05:00

@Darius: Great question.

It will really depend on what you want your twitterbot to do. If it will only be updating one or more account statuses (i.e. one use case of the Twitter API) and you want to strip out third-party dependencies, you might be better off writing your own Ruby bindings to the Twitter.com API with Net::HTTP. If you need a wider amount of API coverage, then you should choose a library that fits your needs and coding-style preference.

As far as I know Twitter4R does have much more API coverage of the Twitter REST API than the twitter gem, but the twitter gem recently started supporting OAuth, which I am still working on.

There is another Ruby gem that has twitter API bindings, but I do not remember the name of it and think it's primary selling point was that it was smaller and lighter weight and only supported the basics. So you should check that out to determine if it fits your needs.

I am not 100% sure any more, but last time I dabbled with the twitter gem you couldn't easily change the "source" for HTTP Auth usage and Twitter4R has supported that (and HTTP proxy support) for a very long time already. In fact, it was one of the three reasons why I created Twitter4R (easy application customizability) instead of just using the primarily command-line tool (as it was then) twitter gem.

The twitter gem has change significantly since then, but still doesn't appear to support some parts of the REST API and sugar coats the search API like you would expect a Java library to do. It is a matter of personal style whether you like that type of thing or not. I personally get the chills whenever I am reminded of my Java development days!:)

Hope that summary helps,
Susan

Thanks susan! That does sound pretty good. I'm cu...

2009-05-18T15:13:00.000-05:00

Thanks susan! That does sound pretty good.

I'm curious to know who / how people are using your gem these days? mostly for integration? That might be a nice paragraph for your "state of the plugin" address.

On a related note, I'm wondering what the right approach for building a twitterbot would be. Are there any frameworks you can recommend with your superior knowledge of the domain? :)