The Twitter Ruby Gem

A Ruby interface to 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 exists as a separate project:

gem install t

Documentation

http://rdoc.info/gems/twitter

Announcements

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

Mailing List

Please direct questions about this 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 4?

Twitter API v1.1

Version 4 of this library targets Twitter API v1.1. To understand the implications of this change, please read the following announcements from Twitter:

Despite the removal of certain underlying functionality in Twitter API v1.1, this library aims to preserve backward-compatibility wherever possible. For example, despite the remove of the GET statuses/retweeted_by_user resource, the Twitter::API#retweeted_by_user method continues to exist, implemented by making multiple requests to the GET statuses/user_timeline resource. As a result, there is no longer a one-to-one correlation between method calls and Twitter API requests. In fact, it's possible for a single method call to exceed the Twitter API rate limit for a resource. If you think this might cause a problem for your application, feel free to join the discussion.

Rate Limiting

Another consequence of Twitter API v1.1 is that the Twitter::Client#rate_limit method has been removed, since the concept of a client-wide rate limit no longer exists. Rate limits are now applied on a per-resource level, however, since there is no longer a one-to-one mapping between methods and Twitter API resources, it's not entirely obvious how rate limit information should be exposed. I've decided to go back to the pre-3.0.0 behavior of including rate limit information on Twitter::Error objects. Here's an example of how to handle rate limits:

MAX_ATTEMPTS = 3
num_attempts = 0
begin
  num_attempts += 1
  retweets = Twitter.retweeted_by_user("sferik")
rescue Twitter::Error::RateLimited => error
  if num_attempts <= MAX_ATTEMPTS
    # NOTE: Your process could go to sleep for up to 15 minutes but if you
    # retry any sooner, it will almost certainly fail with the same exception.
    sleep error.rate_limit.reset_in
    retry
  else
    raise
  end
end

Methods Missing

As a consequence of moving to Twitter API v1.1, the following methods from version 3 are no longer available in version 4:

Twitter::API#accept
Twitter::API#deny
Twitter::API#disable_notifications
Twitter::API#enable_notifications
Twitter::API#end_session
Twitter::API#no_retweet_ids
Twitter::API#rate_limit_status
Twitter::API#rate_limited?
Twitter::API#recommendations
Twitter::API#related_results
Twitter::API#retweeted_to_user
Twitter::API#trends_daily
Twitter::API#trends_weekly
Twitter::Client#rate_limit
Twitter::RateLimit#class

Custom Endpoints

The Twitter::API#update_with_media method no longer uses the custom upload.twitter.com endpoint, so media_endpoint configuration has been removed. Likewise, the Twitter::API#search method no longer uses the custom search.twitter.com endpoint, so search_endpoint configuration has also been removed.

Errors

It's worth mentioning two new error classes:

Twitter::Error::GatewayTimeout
Twitter::Error::RateLimited

In previous versions of this library, rate limit errors were indicated by raising either Twitter::Error::BadRequest or Twitter::Error::EnhanceYourCalm (for the Search API). As of version 4, the library will raise Twitter::Error::RateLimited for all rate limit errors. The Twitter::Error::EnhanceYourCalm class has been aliased to Twitter::Error::RateLimited.

Identity Map

In version 4, the identity map is disabled by default. If you want to enable this feature, you can use the default identity map or write a custom identity map.

Twitter.identity_map = Twitter::IdentityMap

Configuration

Applications that make requests on behalf of one Twitter user at a time can pass global configuration options as a block to the Twitter.configure method.

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

Alternately, you can set the following environment variables:

TWITTER_CONSUMER_KEY
TWITTER_CONSUMER_SECRET
TWITTER_OAUTH_TOKEN
TWITTER_OAUTH_TOKEN_SECRET

After configuration, requests can be made like so:

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

Threadsafe Configuration

Applications that make requests on behalf of multiple Twitter users should avoid using global configuration. Instead, instantiate a Twitter::Client for each user, passing in the user's token/secret pair as a Hash.

You can still specify the consumer_key and consumer_secret globally. (In a Rails application, this could go in config/initiliazers/twitter.rb.)

Twitter.configure do |config|
  config.consumer_key = YOUR_CONSUMER_KEY
  config.consumer_secret = YOUR_CONSUMER_SECRET
end

Then, for each user's token/secret pair, instantiate a Twitter::Client:

@erik = Twitter::Client.new(
  :oauth_token => "Erik's OAuth token",
  :oauth_token_secret => "Erik's OAuth secret"
)

@john = Twitter::Client.new(
  :oauth_token => "John's OAuth token",
  :oauth_token_secret => "John's OAuth secret"
)

You can now make threadsafe requests as the authenticated user like so:

@erik.update("Tweeting as Erik!")
@john.update("Tweeting as John!")

Or, if you prefer, you can specify all configuration options when instantiating a Twitter::Client:

@client = Twitter::Client.new(
  :consumer_key => "a consumer key",
  :consumer_secret => "a consumer secret",
  :oauth_token => "a user's OAuth token",
  :oauth_token_secret => "a user's OAuth secret"
)

This may be useful if you're using multiple consumer key/secret pairs.

Middleware

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

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

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
)

Usage Examples

Return a user's location

Twitter.user("sferik").location

Return a user's most recent Tweet

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

Return the text of a Tweet

Twitter.status(27558893223).text

Find the 3 most recent marriage proposals to @justinbieber

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

Find a Japanese-language Tweet tagged #ruby (excluding retweets)

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

Update your status

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

Read the most recent Tweet in your timeline

Twitter.home_timeline.first.text

For more usage examples, please see the full [documentation][].

Performance

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

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 5 of this library is released, all previous versions will cease to be supported, even if critical security vulnerabilities are discovered.

Stats

Here are some fun facts about this library:

It is implemented in just 2,000 lines of Ruby code
With over 5,000 lines of specs, the spec-to-code ratio is over 2.5:1
The spec suite contains over 600 examples and runs in under 2 seconds
It has 100% C0 code coverage (the tests execute every line of source code at least once)
It is comprehensive: you can request all documented Twitter REST API resources (over 100 resources)
This gem works on every major Ruby implementation, including JRuby and Rubinius
The first version was released on November 26, 2006
This gem has just three runtime dependencies: faraday, multi_json, and simple_oauth
Previous versions of this gem have been downloaded over half a million times

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 version:

Ruby 1.8.7
Ruby 1.9.2
Ruby 1.9.3

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.