README

Dependencies

Don't forget to install gems: run bundle install
Database creation: run rake db:create
Database initialization: run rake db:migrate test:prepare
Run User.create!(email: 'test@stackcommerce.com', password: 'test') in the Rails console to create a user so that you can login!
To run a local server: rails server. Of course, you know this already :)
How to run the test suite: run rake test

Use the following credentials on production to login:

I realized that I would be spending way too much time creating the authorization/authentication software, so I used Thoughtbot's great Clearance gem to get the job done.
I chose to implement a Twitter API system myself. (Otherwise, what's the point of this exercise, right?)
Twitter::Tweet objects are returned instead of a hash from the Twitter API. I did this in order to have some control over what types of objects get returned. For example, tweet.created_at returns a DateTime object!
You'll find that I separated the Twitter::Tweet object from the view representation by using a Decorator class. I consider this type of separaton of concerns very important, and is a subject I could go on about at length.
I did implement 5-minute API call caching, but I don't believe it's working because I didn't implement memcached cache backend for Rails yet on Heroku. We can take care of that in-person if you like. :)

I used Bootstrap css/js to simply style the entire site, including menu and basic bootstrap components and layout.
I chose not to go too deep on UI/UX, although I certainly could have. I wanted to show you a taste of what I can do without going overboard.

I took the path of least resistance and used Minitest instead of RSpec or anything else. I happen to like Minitest, actually!
I added tests for almost everything. I think the only thing lacking here is acceptance testing (broswer-based testing), but that would have taken me way too long to setup for this takehome project. We'll leave acceptance testing as a project for another day.
Note that I should have used something like VCR or a mock/stub implementation instead of hitting the Twitter API for the test suite. I decided to sidestep this problem for now, since we're not running a bunch of tests on an integration server or anything. Once again, I didn't want to sink a ton of time on nitty-gritty details.