Build a Cross-Platform Twitter Client – Tuts+ Premium

In this series, we will develop a Twitter client, called “Tweets”, using the jQuery Mobile and PhoneGap frameworks. This project will be deployed to Android and iOS environments as a native application. The user interface of Tweets will be built using jQuery Mobile and creating the native application will be done via PhoneGap. We will also use the PhoneGap Storage API to access native database functionality. All coding will be done with HTML and JavaScript utilizing jQuery, jQuery Mobile, and the PhoneGap libraries.

Tutorial Teaser

Our application will utilize the Twitter API via the jQuery ajax() calls. In this section, we will review the particular Twitter API methods used in the application.

The Social media site Twitter has a web based API for desktop or mobile applications to post data or query existing data in Twitter. The API has the REST (Representational State Transfer) architectural style and is accessible via the HTTP protocol. Detailed documentation for the API can be found in the official Twitter API docs.

In our sample application, we will use two API methods: user_timeline and search.

user_timeline

The user_timeline method returns the most recent tweets posted by a user. If the user whose tweets are requested has protected them, then you can access those tweets only if you are authenticated and the user who owns those tweets has accepted your follow request. To keep things simple, our application does not facilitate any means of authentication to Twitter. For this reason, we can access only those tweets that are not protected. Many organizations use Twitter to stay in touch with their customers. Therefore, to encourage followers, they do not protect their tweets. For example, many news organizations tweet breaking news in their Twitter account. Our sample application can be used to access the latest tweets by any Twitter account as long as it is not protected.

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