Disqus - Latest Comments for mbleigh

Re: TweetStream: Ruby Access to the Twitter Streaming API - Intridea Company Blog

mbleigh — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 11:18:53 -0000

I believe that expensive block calls will all eventually get processed, but could get substantially backlogged. I would recommend utilizing a queue for work that is going to consume substantial time or resources as a best practice generally, and I'd say it holds true here as well.

Re: TwitterAuth: For Near-Instant Twitter Apps - Intridea Company Blog

mbleigh — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 10:58:53 -0000

Greg, you will need to delete the public/index.html file in your Rails application. If you're new to Rails, it serves any static content found in the public directory before it checks any routes, and the default "Welcome to Rails" screen will override the root path until it is deleted. From your Rails root, just run this:

rm public/index.html

And try it again. If you're still having problems, I might suggest trying to follow this tutorial instead, as it does most of the heavy lifting for you: http://www.intridea.com/2009/4/3/rails-template...

Re: TwitterAuth: For Near-Instant Twitter Apps - Intridea Company Blog

mbleigh — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 00:34:11 -0000

Are you running a version of Rails prior to 2.3? TwitterAuth requires Rails Engines support to work.

Re: TweetStream: Ruby Access to the Twitter Streaming API - Intridea Company Blog

mbleigh — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 11:45:26 -0000

I'm not sure exactly what the issue you're experiencing is, but at this point you're definitely dealing with issues of the Twitter API directly and not the gem (TweetStream is just a lightweight wrapper, I promise it's not doing anything complex and nefarious behind the scenes). I'd suggest talking to the Twitter API Talk Google Group (http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-developm...).

Re: TweetStream: Ruby Access to the Twitter Streaming API - Intridea Company Blog

mbleigh — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 21:04:15 -0000

That was an oversight in my construction of the API. It has been fixed
in version 0.1.3 and there is now a "filter" method that can accept
both :track and :follow parameters.

Re: TweetStream: Ruby Access to the Twitter Streaming API - Intridea Company Blog

mbleigh — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 01:33:46 -0000

That was an oversight indeed! I have released a new version of the gem (0.1.3) that adds a 'filter' method to the client for such combination follow and track needs. Thanks for the feedback!

Re: Good Idea, Bad Idea: Thingivore's Rails Rumble Post-Mortem - Intridea Company Blog

mbleigh — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 13:20:05 -0000

I actually participated in the Rumble last year as well, but I don't think I actually bothered to learn from my first-year mistakes, especially with regard to last-minute things. Third time's the charm!

Re: Quick Tip: Railsy Array Checks in jQuery - Intridea Company Blog

mbleigh — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 12:34:09 -0000

I actually chose "any" over "exists" because I find myself frequently failing to remember that jQuery selectors apply to all elements, not just the first, and so by typing "any()" every time I need to check for existence I remind myself "oh yeah, there could be more than one match" and I double-check my selector.

Just a mental helper and also "any" and "empty" match up with the Rails convenience methods so I can code without changing mental contexts.

Re: Rails Template: Create a Twitter Application in Seconds - Intridea Company Blog

mbleigh — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 10:37:03 -0000

You must have your app set as a "Client" instead of a web application. Twitter recently added a pin-requiring data confirmation for all client applications. To solve this, change your application's settings to Browser and set a callback URL.

Re: Present.ly - Present.ly Wins WebWare 100 Editor's Choice Award!

mbleigh — Thu, 28 May 2009 12:30:57 -0000

We take it as a great thing. Twitter is revolutionizing online communication and we never claimed to be anything other than heavily inspired by Twitter. We're applying the ideas of Twitter to a different audience and, we think, adding quite a bit of value of our own. To be the "best" Twitter rip-off is quite an honor (especially given how much competition we have in the arena!)

Re: Ruby Best Practices - Fun with Class.new

mbleigh — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 14:45:02 -0000

I very much like the `Class.new` way of defining exception classes, but I would argue that the metaprogrammed version, though DRYer, hurts readability more substantially than it helps the code design.

Re: Rails Template: Create a Twitter Application in Seconds - Intridea Company Blog

mbleigh — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 15:39:50 -0000

You need to have Rails 2.3 or greater to take advantage of templates and TwitterAuth both. Sorry!

Re: Present.ly - Present.ly Native Applications For Your Desktop and Mobile Phone

mbleigh — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 08:43:50 -0000

There should be a small pop-up notification in the bottom right-hand corner of the window. Please check your settings to make sure they are enabled.

Re: TwitterAuth: For Near-Instant Twitter Apps - Intridea Company Blog

mbleigh — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 19:35:45 -0000

You need to make sure that you are specifying http://localhost.com:3000/oauth_callback as the callback in your Twitter application settings, otherwise after you authorize access TwitterAuth will never know that you did so! It used to be automated using an oauth_callback parameter but a security hole in OAuth caused that parameter to be disabled. For more info, try here:

http://wiki.github.com/mbleigh/twitter-auth/twi...

Re: TwitterAuth: For Near-Instant Twitter Apps - Intridea Company Blog

mbleigh — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 19:25:07 -0000

Glad to hear that it's working now. Are there any suggestions for me as to documentation or implementation that could help future users avoid these kinds of problems?

Re: TwitterAuth Supports Sign in with Twitter - Intridea Company Blog

mbleigh — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 19:34:46 -0000

I actually put down some thoughts about the changes in a Wiki page for TwitterAuth: http://wiki.github.com/mbleigh/twitter-auth/twi...

As to allowing one "master" account to control multiple other "slave" accounts, this is functionality that I have been thinking about as well. I've been designing the fundamentals of a gem called 'linked-accounts' that will essentially provide a transparent, Rails-Engines based way to associate one or more OAuth-supporting APIs with an arbitrary model in your Rails application.

E.g. a User could be authenticated via TwitterAuth and then add additional Twitter accounts via the LinkedAccounts gem. Still in the early stages and with RailsConf coming up it might be a while until it comes to fruition, but I wanted to let you know what I've been thinking about on the issue.

I'm hesitant to roll "master account" functionality into TwitterAuth proper because I feel like it has the potential to complicate things when I want to keep the functionality as simple as possible. I'm thinking a separate plugin that interacts well with TwitterAuth would be the way to go for that.

I'm also not taking out oauth_callback support just yet (though I may remove it from the default generator for now) since I believe that Twitter will re-implement it once an OAuth specification update makes it clear how to avoid the session fixation attack while still providing for a dynamic callback.

Re: TwitterAuth Supports Sign in with Twitter - Intridea Company Blog

mbleigh — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 09:43:20 -0000

I can't really think of a time when you wouldn't want to use the /oauth/authenticate process instead of /oauth/authorize...especially since Twitter has stated that if you have an access token already they will return the same one when you go through /oauth/authorize again (though I'm not 100% sure that this has been the case in practice).

Honestly, I think that the "Sign in with Twitter" flow should be the standard, official flow of all OAuth applications and that it should be added to the standard.

Re: TwitterAuth Supports Sign in with Twitter - Intridea Company Blog

mbleigh — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 19:01:34 -0000

Good question (and the first person I've seen to ask it instead of just assuming it's the same thing). "Sign in with Twitter" is essentially an express path through OAuth to facilitate OAuth as a login process. In the normal OAuth process, the user has to click "Allow" each time they log in regardless of whether they have done so in the past, generating a new access token.

With "Sign in with Twitter" if a user has already authorized an application before, Twitter will skip the authorization step and simply jump straight to the callback with the existing access token, meaning a single click will log you all the way in if a) you are logged in to Twitter and b) you have already authorized the application before. It's similar to something that I actually suggested as an extension to OAuth on the mailing list and I'm glad to see that Twitter implemented it without it needing to become part of the spec!

Of course, Twitter has disabled the feature while they're working out some kind of kinks, so right now it's somewhat useless.

Re: twitter_auth installation

mbleigh — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 15:01:53 -0000

Haha, that's not my logic! It must be built in to the Rails generator system to look up synonyms in the dictionary, because that certainly isn't my work.

Re: Rails Template: Create a Twitter Application in Seconds - Intridea Company Blog

mbleigh — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 19:37:04 -0000

I didn't mean to offend, but how else would I term it? The usefulness of this template is that you can create a Twitter application in a very short amount of time. I personally haven't seen too many posts along that line, but sorry to irk you.

Re: TwitterAuth: For Near-Instant Twitter Apps - Intridea Company Blog

mbleigh — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 09:33:12 -0000

Cool stuff! I haven't gotten around to creating Rails templates much yet but stuff like that makes it even easier to get off the ground.

Re: TwitterAuth: For Near-Instant Twitter Apps - Intridea Company Blog

mbleigh — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 23:35:24 -0000

Dan,

TwitterAuth is meant to be a full authentication system, meaning that it isn't much of a mix-in solution right now. I'd certainly be interested in working to make it easy to migrate to TwitterAuth from Authlogic or other authentication systems, but since the purpose of the plugin is to provide external authentication via Twitter I don't really see moving it toward a layer on top of another authentication system any time soon.

Thanks for the question, though!.

Re: Using Git Submodules for Shared Rails Components - Intridea Company Blog

mbleigh — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 21:58:43 -0000

Brandon,

I agree that Engines are great ways to share functionality as well. In my case, first I'm running an app that isn't Rails 2.3 yet which leaves Engines support out at least for now.

Second, I think that Engines serve best for loosely coupled functionality that isn't really a central part of the application. In this case the functionality that I'm sharing is tightly coupled and critical in both Rails apps, so I felt that a plugin approach wasn't quite right.

Additionally, even in an Engines setup the custom test setups and indeed most of the same arguments would need to apply, just in the vendor/plugins/plugin-name directory instead of shared.

Re: TwitterAuth: For Near-Instant Twitter Apps - Intridea Company Blog

mbleigh — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 12:41:35 -0000

While in development you can actually leave the callback blank in the application registration. If you notice in the twitter_auth.yml there's an oauth_callback setting. This will be sent to Twitter to let it know that it should redirect back to localhost. You can change this to any URL, local or otherwise.

Re: Utilize Canonical URLs in Your Rails Applications - Intridea Company Blog

mbleigh — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 12:07:59 -0000

I'm not trying to purport it as some amazing piece of programming. Personally, I prefer functionality to be wrapped in plugins, even if simple and small. Means I don't have to worry about it or copy it over from project to project.

I also have some hopes to add some more advanced functionality to the plugin in the future (automatic URL canonization based on routes.rb configuration). Sorry you don't like it!