I’ve recently discovered Twitter and made a small Ruby class for it, to be further extended into the full API. I’ve included the sourcecode in this post, but …

I found out somebody already wrote a whole gem with the complete api, which you can install using

sudo gem install twitter

require 'net/http'

class Twitter

  attr_accessor :username
  attr_accessor :password

  TIMELINE_FRIENDS = 1
  TIMELINE_PUBLIC = 2

  def initialize( username = "", password = "" )
    @username = username
    @password = password
  end

  def update( status = "" ) 
    req = Net::HTTP::Post.new('/statuses/update.xml')
    req.basic_auth( @username, @password )
    req.set_form_data({'status'=>status}, ';')
    res = Net::HTTP.new('twitter.com', 80).start do |http| 
      http.request(req) 
    end
    res.body
  end

  def timeline(timeline = TIMELINE_FRIENDS )
    if timeline == TIMELINE_FRIENDS
      path = '/statuses/friends_timeline.xml'
    else
      path = '/statuses/public_timeline.xml'
    end

    req = Net::HTTP::Get.new(path)
    req.basic_auth( @username, @password )
    res = Net::HTTP.new('twitter.com', 80).start do |http| 
      http.request(req) 
    end
    res.body
  end

end

# Change here ...
t = Twitter.new("<your-email>","<your-password>")
puts t.timeline

You can use the update method to post a new update like so:

t = Twitter.new("<your-email>","<your-password>")
puts t.update("Checking out this nice class Tom made")

Oh, and while you’re at it: add me to your friends list …