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RAILS-TWITTER-OAUTH-SAMPLE ↑

Purpose ↑

Demonstrates the use of rails with the Twitter RESTful API with OAuth 1.0a. Uses the oauth ruby gem.

Version and change log ↑

  • 1.0.2 - updated to fix oauth 0.4.0 compatibility issue

  • 1.0.1 - update to new pagination mechanism for social graph methods

  • 1.0 - initial release

Other References ↑

  1. Twitter API documentation - apiwiki.twitter.com/

  2. OAuth gem github.com/pelle/oauth/tree/master

  3. Twitter OAuth gem (another REST API client library for Ruby - not used in this example) github.com/moomerman/twitter_oauth/tree/master

Required gems ↑

These need to be installed in addition to all standard gems required by rails:

  • json (1.1.6 at time of writing)

  • oauth (0.4.0, 0.3.6, or 0.3.5 at time of writing)

NB: for heroku deployment, these are specified in the .gems file in the root of the project

STEP-BY-STEP (how the app was created) ↑

1. Install oauth gem ↑

gem install oauth or rake gems:install

2. create the application shell ↑

rails rails-twitter-oauth-sample cd rails-twitter-oauth-sample rake db:create

3. create a member scaffold ↑

ruby script/generate scaffold member twitter_id:integer screen_name:string token:string secret:string profile_image_url:string

Member model updated to use screen_name as the key:

def to_param screen_name end

4. Prepare the database ↑

rake db:migrate

5. Create the oauth support in ./lib ↑

twitter_oauth.rb

  • Implements TwitterOauth class, which is a wrapper around the oauth gem, providing specific support for twitter.

  • As a design principle, the TwitterOauth class logs and re-raises any errors that occur; some custom error classes are defined to suit.

  • It includes implementations for many of the twitter api methods (but not all at this point)

oauth_system.rb

  • A controller mixin module to provide twitter oauth support in an application.

  • Uses the TwitterOauth class for oauth functionality.

  • Works specifically with the Member ActiveRecord class to update/verify user details.

  • It includes wrappers for many of the twitter api methods, basically to reroute errors into the flash hash.

6. Modify MembersController to use OAuth ↑

# include the oauth_system mixin include OauthSystem # specify oauth to be on all user-specific actions before_filter :oauth_login_required, :except => [ :callback, :signout, :index ]

7. Specify routes ↑

Map members resources Hook /members/callback method to module OauthSystem.callback map.resources :members, :collection => { :callback => :get }

Hook /signout method to module OauthSystem.signout: map.signout ‘/signout’, :controller => ‘members’, :action => ‘signout’

For the sample app, use MembersController.index as the landing page: map.root :controller => “members”

8. Customise views and controller methods for some basic functionality ↑

MembersController actions

  • index - a basic landing page

  • show - main page for logged-in user

  • partialfriends - xhr responder to render friends list

  • partialfollowers - xhr responder to render followers list

  • partialmentions - xhr responder to render mentions list

  • partialdms - xhr responder to render direct messages list

9. Add rake task to demonstrate proxy-login ↑

See lib/tasks/test.rake: demo_proxy_login task connects as the last member and exercises the API a bit

To execute:

rake demo_proxy_login

10. Configuring twitter application keys ↑

Register your application at twitter.com/oauth_clients

Be sure to select the following settings in the registration:

  • Application Type = Browser

  • Callback URL = the fully qualified callback to your app e.g. rails-twitter-oauth-sample.heroku.com/members/callback

  • Default Access type = Read & Write (if you want to be able to do things like post status updates)

  • Use Twitter for login = yes

Note the “application key” and “consumer secret” numbers that twitter generates - these are unique for your application and are required to complete the configuration.

Add the twitter application key and consumer secret as operating system environment variables (TWOAUTH_KEY and TWOAUTH_SECRET respectively).

Set your callback URL as operating system environment variable (TWOAUTH_CALLBACK).

Alternatively, you can edit config/environment.rb to set these directly.

If you are using heroku, add the environment keys using the heroky utility (gem):

heroku config:add TWOAUTH_KEY=8N029N81 TWOAUTH_SECRET=9s83109d3+583493190 TWOAUTH_CALLBACK=rails-twitter-oauth-sample.heroku.com/members/callback

11. Testing the application locally ↑

When you register the application at twitter, you will specify a fully qualified callback URL e.g. rails-twitter-oauth-sample.heroku.com/members/callback

This is the address that twitter sends users back to after the twitter authentication step.

To test on a local development machine (not known on the web/in DNS as the domain name in the callback), you can simply add the registered domain to your hosts file (aliasing localhost) e.g.

127.0.0.1 rails-twitter-oauth-sample.heroku.com

NB: most browsers will need to be restarted each time you change this, as the resolved name will have been cached if you have already used the address.