How do you iterate through Twitter gem user timeline?

Question

Rails newbie. I'm writing an application that pulls a Twitter user timeline using the sferik Twitter gem, iterates through the timeline and writes each individual tweet into a model/table. I can get the user timeline into a hash but when I try and iterate (e.g. tweet.each do..) and save each tweet the application only saves the last tweet from the hash, not each individual tweet. I have tried to do a nested loop but get an undefined "each" method on the second level iteration. Code below, all suggestions welcome.

Rails 3, PostgreSQL, Twitter gem.

**Controller**
**class TweetController < ApplicationController**
require 'twitter'

**def tweet**
    @tweet = Tweet.new
    @tweeters = User.tweeters.all #get twitter users in my application
client = Twitter::REST::Client.new do |config|
  config.consumer_key        = secret
  config.consumer_secret     = secret
  config.access_token        = secret
  config.access_token_secret = secret
end

  @tweeters.each do |element| *#for each user get tweets to insert into the model*
    @tweet.user_id = element.id
    @tweet.screen_name = element.screen_name
    @content = client.user_timeline(element.twitter_id, :since_id => element.tweet_since_id).reverse

  @content.each do |post| *#if I return 4 twitter posts this loop only inserts the last post*
        if post.id > element.tweet_since_id
      element.tweet_since_id = post.id 
          @tweet.content = post.text
          @tweet.save
        end
      end
   end
 end

So the "@content.each do |post|" section does not go through each tweet and insert 4 different records, it only inserts the last record. I have tried every form of the following and receive an "undefined each method for Twitter id..."

  @content.each do |post|
       post.id.each do |t|
        if t.id > element.tweet_since_id
      element.tweet_since_id = t.id 
          @tweet.content = t.text
          @tweet.save
        end
      end

Any thoughts or suggestions?

This is becuse you store data into a single @tweet record, you need also create a new record juts after the `@tweet.save` — Малъ Скрылевъ, Dec 21 '13 at 06:52
THANK YOU!!!! I had to move some lines of code inside of the "@content" loop but creating a new "@tweet" record did the trick. I really appreciate the help. Thank you again. — user3124731, Dec 21 '13 at 07:33

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 21 '13 at 08:01

This is because you store data into a single @tweet record, you need also create a new record just after the @tweet.save, it is need in order to new data do not overwrite old ones. Do something like:

  @content.each do |post|
     if post.id > element.tweet_since_id
        @tweet = Tweet.new :screen_name => element.screen_name, :content => post.text
        @tweet.user_id = element.id
        @tweet.save
        element.tweet_since_id = post.id 
     end
  end

Note, that it is good style that fields of a record of a view something_id has belong to another record types in your DB, if you have no record assiciated with the field, use another naming, like something_xid or somethind_sid.

How do you iterate through Twitter gem user timeline?

1 Answers1