The Twitter Ruby Gem

A Ruby wrapper for the Twitter API.

Installation

gem install twitter

Looking for the Twitter command-line interface? It was removed from this gem in version 0.5.0 and now is maintained as a separate project:

gem install t

Documentation

http://rdoc.info/gems/twitter

Follow @gem on Twitter

You should follow @gem on Twitter for announcements and updates about this library.

Mailing List

Please direct questions about the library to the mailing list.

Apps Wiki

Does your project or organization use this gem? Add it to the apps wiki!

What's new in version 3?

Hashes

All returned hashes now use symbols as keys instead of strings.

Methods

The following methods now accept multiple users or ids as arguments and return arrays:

Twitter::Client#accept                  Twitter::Client#enable_notifications    Twitter::Client#saved_search_destroy
Twitter::Client#block                   Twitter::Client#favorite                Twitter::Client#status_destroy
Twitter::Client#deny                    Twitter::Client#follow                  Twitter::Client#unblock
Twitter::Client#direct_message_destroy  Twitter::Client#report_spam             Twitter::Client#unfavorite
Twitter::Client#disable_notifications   Twitter::Client#retweet                 Twitter::Client#unfollow

Whenever more than one user or id is passed to any of these methods, HTTP requests are made in parallel using multiple threads, resulting in dramatically better performance than calling these methods multiple times in serial.

The Twitter::Client#direct_messages method has been renamed to Twitter::Client#direct_messages_received.

The Twitter::Status#expanded_urls method has been removed. Use Twitter::Status#urls instead.

The Twitter::Client#profile_image method has been removed. Use Twitter::User#profile_image_url (or Twitter::User#profile_image_url_https) instead.

The Twitter::Client#follow method now checks to make sure the user isn't already being followed. If you don't wish to perform that check (which does require an extra HTTP request), you can use the new Twitter::Client#follow! method instead. Note: This may re-send an email notification to the user, even if they are already being followed.

The Twitter::Client#search now returns a Twitter::SearchResult object, which contains metadata and a results array. In the previous major version, this method returned an array of Twitter::Status objects, which is now accessible by sending the results message to a Twitter::SearchResults object.

Version 2

Twitter::Client.search("query").map(&:full_text)

Version 3

Twitter::Client.search("query").results.map(&:full_text)

Configuration

The Faraday middleware stack is now fully configurable and is exposed as a Faraday::Builder. You can modify the default middleware in-place:

Twitter.middleware.insert_after Twitter::Response::RaiseClientError, CustomMiddleware

You can no longer set a custom adapter via Twitter::Config#adapter=, however a custom adapter may be set as part of a custom middleware stack:

Twitter.middleware = Faraday::Builder.new(
  &Proc.new do |builder|
    # Specify a middleware stack here
    builder.adapter :some_other_adapter
  end
)

Support for API gateways via gateway configuration has removed. This functionality may be replicated by inserting custom Faraday middleware.

The Twitter::Conif#proxy= and Twitter::Config#user_agent= setters have also been removed. These options can be set by modifying the default connection options:

Twitter.connection_options[:proxy] = 'http://erik:sekret@proxy.example.com:8080'
Twitter.connection_options[:headers][:user_agent] = 'Custom User Agent'

Authentication

This library now attempts to pull credentials from ENV if they are not otherwise specified. In bash:

export TWITTER_CONSUMER_KEY=YOUR_CONSUMER_KEY
export TWITTER_CONSUMER_SECRET=YOUR_CONSUMER_SECRET
export TWITTER_OAUTH_TOKEN=YOUR_OAUTH_TOKEN
export TWITTER_OAUTH_TOKEN_SECRET=YOUR_OAUTH_TOKEN_SECRET

Identity Map

This version introduces an identity map, which ensures that the same objects only get initialized once:

Twitter.user("sferik").object_id == Twitter.user("sferik").object_id #=> true

(In all previous versions of this gem, this statement would have returned false.)

Errors

Any Faraday client errors are captured and re-raised as a Twitter::Error::ClientError, so there's no longer a need to separately rescue Faraday::Error::ClientError.

The Twitter::Error::EnhanceYourCalm class has been removed, since all Search API requests are made via api.twitter.com, which does not return HTTP 420. When you hit your rate limit, Twitter returns HTTP 400, which raises a Twitter::Error::BadRequest.

All Twitter::Error.ratelimit methods (including Twitter::Error.retry_at) have been replaced by the Twitter::RateLimit singleton class. After making any request, you can check the Twitter::RateLimit object for your current rate limit status.

rate_limit = Twitter::RateLimit.instance
rate_limit.limit     #=> 150
rate_limit.remaining #=> 149
rate_limit.reset_at  #=> 2012-06-23 20:04:36 -0700
rate_limit.reset_in  #=> 3540 (seconds)

Additional notes

This will be the last major version of this library to support Ruby 1.8. Requiring Ruby 1.9 will allow us to remove various hacks put in place to maintain Ruby 1.8 compatibility. The first stable version of Ruby 1.9 was released on August 19, 2010. If you haven't found the opportunity to upgrade your Ruby interpreter since then, let this be your nudge. Once version 4 of this library is released, all previous versions will cease to be supported, even if critical security vulnerabilities are discovered.

Here are some fun facts about the 3.0 release:

The entire library is implemented in just 2,170 source lines of code
With over 5,000 lines of specs, the spec-to-code ratio is over 2.3:1
The spec suite contains 610 examples and runs in under 3 seconds on a MacBook
This project has 100% C0 code coverage (the tests execute every line of source code at least once)
At the time of release, this library is comprehensive: you can request all documented Twitter REST API resources that respond with JSON (over 100)
This is the first multithreaded release (requests are made in parallel)
This gem works on every major Ruby implementation, including JRuby and Rubinius
The first version was released on November 26, 2006 (over 5 years ago)
This gem has just three dependencies: faraday, multi_json, and simple_oauth
Previous versions of this gem have been downloaded over half a million times

Performance

You can improve performance by preloading a faster JSON parsing library. By default, JSON will be parsed with okjson. For faster JSON parsing, we recommend Oj.

Usage Examples

Return @sferik's location

Twitter.user("sferik").location

Return @sferik's most recent Tweet

Twitter.user_timeline("sferik").first.text

Return the text of the Tweet at https://twitter.com/sferik/statuses/27558893223

Twitter.status(27558893223).text

Find the 3 most recent marriage proposals to @justinbieber

Twitter.search("to:justinbieber marry me", :rpp => 3, :result_type => "recent").results.map do |status|
  "#{status.from_user}: #{status.text}"
end

Let's find a Japanese-language Tweet tagged #ruby (no retweets)

Twitter.search("#ruby -rt", :lang => "ja", :rpp => 1).results.first.text

Certain methods require authentication. To get your Twitter OAuth credentials, register an app at http://dev.twitter.com/apps

Twitter.configure do |config|
  config.consumer_key = YOUR_CONSUMER_KEY
  config.consumer_secret = YOUR_CONSUMER_SECRET
  config.oauth_token = YOUR_OAUTH_TOKEN
  config.oauth_token_secret = YOUR_OAUTH_TOKEN_SECRET
end

Update your status

Twitter.update("I'm tweeting with @gem!")

Read the most recent Tweet in your timeline

Twitter.home_timeline.first.text

Get your rate limit status

rate_limit_status = Twitter.rate_limit_status
"#{rate_limit_status.remaining_hits} Twitter API request(s) remaining for the next #{((rate_limit_status.reset_time - Time.now) / 60).floor} minutes and #{((rate_limit_status.reset_time - Time.now) % 60).round} seconds"

Contributing

In the spirit of free software, everyone is encouraged to help improve this project.

Here are some ways you can contribute:

by using alpha, beta, and prerelease versions
by reporting bugs
by suggesting new features
by writing or editing documentation
by writing specifications
by writing code (no patch is too small: fix typos, add comments, clean up inconsistent whitespace)
by refactoring code
by fixing issues
by reviewing patches

Submitting an Issue

We use the GitHub issue tracker to track bugs and features. Before submitting a bug report or feature request, check to make sure it hasn't already been submitted. When submitting a bug report, please include a Gist that includes a stack trace and any details that may be necessary to reproduce the bug, including your gem version, Ruby version, and operating system. Ideally, a bug report should include a pull request with failing specs.

Submitting a Pull Request

Fork the repository.
Create a topic branch.
Add specs for your unimplemented feature or bug fix.
Run bundle exec rake spec. If your specs pass, return to step 3.
Implement your feature or bug fix.
Run bundle exec rake spec. If your specs fail, return to step 5.
Run open coverage/index.html. If your changes are not completely covered by your tests, return to step 3.
Add documentation for your feature or bug fix.
Run bundle exec rake yard. If your changes are not 100% documented, go back to step 8.
Add, commit, and push your changes.
Submit a pull request.

Supported Ruby Versions

This library aims to support and is tested against the following Ruby implementations:

Ruby 1.8.7
Ruby 1.9.2
Ruby 1.9.3
JRuby
Rubinius

If something doesn't work on one of these interpreters, it should be considered a bug.

This library may inadvertently work (or seem to work) on other Ruby implementations, however support will only be provided for the versions listed above.

If you would like this library to support another Ruby version, you may volunteer to be a maintainer. Being a maintainer entails making sure all tests run and pass on that implementation. When something breaks on your implementation, you will be personally responsible for providing patches in a timely fashion. If critical issues for a particular implementation exist at the time of a major release, support for that Ruby version may be dropped.

sguignot/twitter