WhalePail is a simple app to generate RSS feeds for a variety of Twitter data. You plug in a few parameters, and get back an RSS feed, which you can then check whenever you want. This is handy if there’s someone or something you want to follow on Twitter, but the standard methods of using Twitter aren’t working for you.
The code runs on Sinatra and is pretty basic. I wrote it to learn about a couple things at once: Sinatra, Twitter’s new OAuth Requirments, and the DataMapper library.
p.s. Sinatra rocks
To run the code on your own server, you will need to:
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install the code somewhere
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run ‘bundle install’
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setup an app on twitter
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specify the parameters you need to get OAuth working
You can create a new app here: twitter.com/apps/new
app type: browser default access type: read-only callback url - Unless you change something, this will be http://location-of-app/auth
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Add caching
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Add an option to get JSON back for use with other apps
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Add some JS widgets to display similar to Twitter’s widgets
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Consider a version that doesn’t require authorization – we don’t actually need to use OAuth to do searches, it’s strictly to manage users, but that could be handled with a cookie/session key, or traditional registration.
Licensed under MIT creativecommons.org/licenses/MIT/
Use it in good health.
Based on sinitter sample app github.com/moomerman/sinitter