Recently, I’ve been working on a new Twitter application that you can find in the Marketing for Mavens lab called ReStream. I don’t want to get into the details of that app as you can read more here. What I’d like to do is help those that have their own Twitter app ideas get started.

Thanks to those who have walked this path before me, getting your own Twitter app running is much easier than you’d think, especially if you’re already familiar with Ruby on Rails. If you’re not familiar with Rails, don’t let it hold you back. If you’ve programmed in other languages before then you can quickly pick it up.

Getting Started

To get started you will need Rails setup on your local machine. Start with RubyOnRails.org and these tutorials which helped me (some are old but are still helpful).

Now that Rails is Setup

• Go to github.com and download jnunemaker’s Twitter application.
• You will want to create a new folder for your Twitter application and copy all of the files and folders from this zip file you just downloaded into your new folder.
• Open a your terminal window and go to the new folder you created for your Twitter app.
• Install this Twitter gem. sudo gem install twitter
• Start your server. script/server
• Your application should now be running.
• Open http://localhost:3000 in your browser and login to your new Twitterapp.

What’s Next

The sky’s the limit. jnunemaker has provided a fantastic foundation for any one aspiring to use Twitter’s API to build new applications. Even if your not familiar with Rails, you can look through the existing code to see how everything comes together.

If you need help or have any questions please let me know in the comment section below.