The Twitter Ruby Gem

A Ruby interface to the Twitter API.

Installation

gem install twitter

CLI

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.

Documentation

http://rdoc.info/gems/twitter

Examples

https://github.com/sferik/twitter/tree/master/examples

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!

Configuration

Twitter API v1.1 requires you to authenticate via OAuth, so you'll need to register your application with Twitter. Once you've registered an application, make sure to set the correct access level, otherwise you may see the error:

Read-only application cannot POST

Your new application will be assigned a consumer key/secret pair and you will be assigned an OAuth access token/secret pair for that application. You'll need to configure these values before you make a request or else you'll get the error:

Bad Authentication data

You can pass configuration options as a block to Twitter::REST::Client.new.

client = Twitter::REST::Client.new do |config|
  config.consumer_key        = "YOUR_CONSUMER_KEY"
  config.consumer_secret     = "YOUR_CONSUMER_SECRET"
  config.access_token        = "YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN"
  config.access_token_secret = "YOUR_ACCESS_SECRET"
end

Usage Examples

After configuring a client, you can do the following things.

Tweet (as the authenticated user)

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

Follow a user (by screen name or user ID)

client.follow("gem")
client.follow(213747670)

Fetch a user (by screen name or user ID)

client.user("gem")
client.user(213747670)

Fetch a cursored list of followers with profile details (by screen name or user ID, or by implicit authenticated user)

client.followers("gem")
client.followers(213747670)
client.followers

Fetch a cursored list of friends with profile details (by screen name or user ID, or by implicit authenticated user)

client.friends("gem")
client.friends(213747670)
client.friends

Fetch the timeline of Tweets by a user

client.user_timeline("gem")
client.user_timeline(213747670)

Fetch the timeline of Tweets from the authenticated user's home page

client.home_timeline

Fetch the timeline of Tweets mentioning the authenticated user

client.mentions_timeline

Fetch a particular Tweet by ID

client.status(27558893223)

Collect the three most recent marriage proposals to @justinbieber

client.search("to:justinbieber marry me", result_type: "recent").take(3).collect do |tweet|
  "#{tweet.user.screen_name}: #{tweet.text}"
end

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

client.search("#ruby -rt", lang: "ja").first.text

For more usage examples, please see the full documentation.

Streaming

Site Streams are restricted to whitelisted accounts. To apply for access, follow the steps in the Site Streams documentation. User Streams do not require prior approval.

Configuration works just like Twitter::REST::Client

client = Twitter::Streaming::Client.new do |config|
  config.consumer_key        = "YOUR_CONSUMER_KEY"
  config.consumer_secret     = "YOUR_CONSUMER_SECRET"
  config.access_token        = "YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN"
  config.access_token_secret = "YOUR_ACCESS_SECRET"
end

Stream a random sample of all tweets

client.sample do |object|
  puts object.text if object.is_a?(Twitter::Tweet)
end

Stream mentions of coffee or tea

topics = ["coffee", "tea"]
client.filter(track: topics.join(",")) do |object|
  puts object.text if object.is_a?(Twitter::Tweet)
end

Stream tweets, events, and direct messages for the authenticated user

client.user do |object|
  case object
  when Twitter::Tweet
    puts "It's a tweet!"
  when Twitter::DirectMessage
    puts "It's a direct message!"
  when Twitter::Streaming::StallWarning
    warn "Falling behind!"
  end
end

An object may be one of the following:

Twitter::Tweet
Twitter::DirectMessage
Twitter::Streaming::DeletedTweet
Twitter::Streaming::Event
Twitter::Streaming::FriendList
Twitter::Streaming::StallWarning

Object Graph

This entity-relationship diagram is generated programatically. If you add or remove any Twitter objects, please regenerate the ERD with the following command:

bundle exec rake erd

Supported Ruby Versions

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

Ruby 1.9.3
Ruby 2.0.0
Ruby 2.1
JRuby 1.7 (in Ruby 1.9 mode)

If something doesn't work on one of these versions, it's a bug.

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

If you would like this library to support another Ruby version or implementation, 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 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.

Versioning

This library aims to adhere to Semantic Versioning 2.0.0. Violations of this scheme should be reported as bugs. Specifically, if a minor or patch version is released that breaks backward compatibility, that version should be immediately yanked and/or a new version should be immediately released that restores compatibility. Breaking changes to the public API will only be introduced with new major versions. As a result of this policy, you can (and should) specify a dependency on this gem using the Pessimistic Version Constraint with two digits of precision. For example:

spec.add_dependency 'twitter', '~> 6.0'