17.Sep.2007

I spent about a week developing TwitterNotes, including the time spent implementing the design, and I would like to share some technical details about creation. It was built using the Ruby on Rails framework running on the Mongrel web server locally, on the development stage, and on Apache, in a shared hosting plan, on the live version. Here’s the list of external plugins and libraries I used followed by some considerations.
I already made an article about it and I implemented it on the Rails application following Susan Potter’s example on the discussion group. All went well and it’s a very nice library to work with.
This plugin was a bit modded to create a non-registration account creation. Basically you just enter the Twitter account username and password, it checks with Twitter4R if the login is valid on Twitter if you don’t have already an account on TwitterNotes, and then creates your account on it. Besides that, the plugin has all things needed.
Since every note can be tagged, I just had to make a small parser for each Twitter message to capture the tags, insert them on a array and send them to @note.tag_list.add. You can also insert them directly in a string containing them comma separated: @note.tag_list = "ruby,rails,twitter". It even gives you the tag counts for a tag cloud @user.notes.tag_counts. A very useful plugin indeed.
I wanted HTTP Basic Authentication for the API and the administration zone, and since I’m wasn’t using Edge Rails, I installed the plugin version. It’s very simple to use, but on the live version on the shared host it wasn’t working. Fortunately this issue had already been addressed and I only needed to substitute a line in public/.htaccess for:
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ dispatch.fcgi [E=X-HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization},QSA,L]I don’t remember any more interesting information about TwitterNotes development. If you would like any more information on the application or its development feel free to ask.
9 Comments
There's the possibility, although it would create a different set of problems, to make our own Twitter client. But or we make something available on several platforms or it wouldn't have many reach.
But I guess I will start a discussion over at the community over that matter, since you're not the first one asking for a method to send private notes.
Nevertheless, there's also a large range of use for TwitterNotes, with notes being public, since most Twitter users enjoy more the sharing and community aspect of the service.
I need to save Twitter's username/password due to the limitation of the Twitter API that only allows you to take the last 20 messages for a user's timeline. Therefore, we need to run a script in the background making sure notes aren't missed between login and refresh times. About the privacy policy, some terms can be found inside the FAQ, but probably a more detailed description will be written and posted on the website.
I use mongrel locally since it's a faster web server than WEBbrick, the one which comes bundled with Rails.
Trying not to make a long speech, the expectation are that we gather a lot of curious who only try it once or so, but specially more power user who would use TwitterNotes more actively and frequently. For the future, we are now working on a method to allow private notes, and we may already have came up with a solution for it. There's also more room for more improvement in the interface, but we'll be careful tweaking it.
I have already did several experiments with Twitter4R and Twitter's API and I haven't found a way to get older messages, unless I don't have their specific id. I maybe me missing something, but 'since' just narrows the results from the last 20 Twitter messages anyway. And fetching that much messages every time someone logs in, it might take too long.
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"Parece fixe :) Bjs*"
mia / 21.Mar.2008 at 07:46pm
"You just have to login on TwitterN..."
sérgio santos / 31.Jan.2008 at 06:43pm
"Could byou please provide with inf..."
akouskouris / 31.Jan.2008 at 12:10pm
"Please give me exact the steps usi..."
andrew / 31.Jan.2008 at 10:02am
"Boa ideia. Parece porreiro"
nuno / 27.Jan.2008 at 01:55am
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