Twitter4R v0.2.0: Messaging API

Probably one of the more recent additions to the Twitter REST API has been that of direct messaging. In the Twitter web interface we were introduced to the supported construct of direct messaging only a couple of months ago. The Messaging API in Twitter4R provides access to these new supported features via two instance methods on the Twitter::Client class: #message and #messages.

Below we can see an example of a common non-trivial usage of this API:

gem('twitter4r', '>=0.2.0')
require('twitter')

client = Twitter::Client.new(:login => 'mylogin', :password => 'mypassword')
received_messages = client.messages(:received)
# Now do whatever it is you wish to do with the Array returned and assigned to received_messages.
# It is an Array of Twitter::Message.  Twitter::Message has the following attributes:
# * sender (Twitter::User)
# * recipient (Twitter::User)
# * text (String)
# * created_at (Time)

new_message = client.message(:post, 'I am addicted to Twitter', 'myfriendslogin')
# Note: if we had a handle to our friend's Twitter::User object we could substitute that object
# for the screen name screen given (i.e. 'myfriendslogin' in the above example).  This would 
# look like:
#  new_message = client.message(:post, 'I am addicted to Twitter', user)

# Now we realized sending that message was a big mistake, so we try to delete is quickly:
deleted_message = client.message(:delete, new_message)

To find out more about the Messaging API of Twitter4R visit the v0.2.0 RDoc and select the examples/messaging.rb link from the top left frame.

Also note that you can create new direct messages via the Model API of Twitter4R as well.

Happy direct messaging on Twitter using Twitter4R.