Last night Twitter4R version 0.2.4 was released with a fix that makes using Twitter4R in Rails much easier.

So let’s quickly kick the tires to see how this all works:

1. Install the Twitter4R v0.2.4 (or above) Ruby Gem: sudo gem install twitter4r
2. Create a new rails application: rails twitter4rails
3. After setting up your config/database.yml to your personal tastes and tweaking the Rails configuration settings in environment.rb, scroll to the bottom of environment.rb and add the following:
   

   gem(’twitter4r’, ‘>=0.2.4′)
   require(’twitter’) # loads core library
   require(’twitter/console’) # loads a helper method we will use
   require(’twitter/rails’) # added Rails extensions for Twitter4R

   module YourAppNamespace
   ENV["RAILS_ENV"] ||= “test” # assume test environment if no RAILS_ENV set.
   ClientContext = Twitter::Client.from_config(”#{RAILS_ROOT}/config/twitter.yml”, ENV["RAILS_ENV"])
   end

4. Now in your controllers you can access YourAppNamespace::ClientContext object as you need to or any other part of the Twitter4R API.

If you still want more, feel free to check out the following links:

• TweetApp: Twitter4R on Rails sample application (>=0.2.4)
• Twitter4R RDoc
• Twitter4R on Rails Screencast (low res. currently, higher res coming)

Today I started putting pagination in the app that I have been working on. Based on recommendations from Obie I decided to use “will_paginate”, a rails plugin for pagination put out by the err the blog guys. It worked amazingly and the view helper was great! I really like the fact that I can apply the same look and feel to all page pagination throughout the app… well umm.. until I wanted to add pagination to a collection not generated from a finder or association. Since I really wanted everything to look the same and behave the same I did the following little trick so that you can call paginate on a plain old array.

class Array
  def paginate(page=1, per_page=15)
    pagination_array = WillPaginate::Collection.new(page, per_page, self.size)
    start_index = pagination_array.offset
    end_index = start_index + (per_page - 1)
    array_to_concat = self[start_index..end_index]
    array_to_concat.nil? ? [] : pagination_array.concat(array_to_concat)
  end
end

Before folks say anything about the above code.. yes I know it could be more concise if I didn’t use all the local variables but I wanted it to be really clear what I was doing here so.. leave it alone.

Now basically you can say

myarray.paginate(params[:page], per_page)

If you want to see it work yourself feel free to run this spec.

require File.dirname(__FILE__) + '/../spec_helper'

describe 'Given we call paginate on an array' do
  it 'should return an array containing the first 3 elements of the org array when page = 1 and per_page_count = 3' do
    array = ["a","b","c","d","e"]
    current_page = 1
    show_per_page = 3
    expected_array = ["a", "b", "c"]
    (array.paginate(current_page, show_per_page)).should == expected_array
  end

  it 'should return an array containing the last 2 elements of the org array when page = 2 and per_page_count = 3' do
    array = ["a","b","c","d","e"]
    current_page = 2
    show_per_page = 3
    expected_array = ["d", "e"]
    (array.paginate(current_page, show_per_page)).should == expected_array
  end

  it 'should return an array containing all the elements of the org array when page = 1 and per_page_count = 5' do
    array = ["a","b","c","d","e"]
    current_page = 1
    show_per_page = 5
    expected_array = ["a","b","c","d","e"]
    (array.paginate(current_page, show_per_page)).should == expected_array
  end

  it 'should return an array containing all the elements of the org array when page = 1 and per_page_count greater than org number of elements i.e = 6' do
    array = ["a","b","c","d","e"]
    current_page = 1
    show_per_page = 6
    expected_array = ["a","b","c","d","e"]
    (array.paginate(current_page, show_per_page)).should == expected_array
  end

  it 'should return an empty array if you ask for a page that does not exist' do
    array = ["a","b","c","d","e"]
    current_page = 3
    show_per_page = 5
    expected_array = []
    (array.paginate(current_page, show_per_page)).should == expected_array
  end

  it 'should return an empty array if you ask for a negative page number' do
    array = ["a","b","c","d","e"]
    current_page = -1
    show_per_page = 5
    expected_array = []
    (array.paginate(current_page, show_per_page)).should == expected_array
  end

  it 'should return an empty array if you ask for a negative per_page number' do
    array = ["a","b","c","d","e"]
    current_page = 1
    show_per_page = -5
    expected_array = []
    (array.paginate(current_page, show_per_page)).should == expected_array
  end
end