Have you been getting the following errors when running the Twitter gem lately ?


/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/httparty-0.4.3/lib/httparty/response.rb:15:in `send': undefined method `stringify_keys' for # (NoMethodError)
from /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/httparty-0.4.3/lib/httparty/response.rb:15:in `method_missing’
from /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/mash-0.0.3/lib/mash.rb:131:in `deep_update’
from /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/mash-0.0.3/lib/mash.rb:50:in `initialize’
from /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/twitter-0.6.13/lib/twitter/search.rb:101:in `new’
from /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/twitter-0.6.13/lib/twitter/search.rb:101:in `fetch’
from test.rb:26


It’s because Twitter has been sending back plain text errors that are treated as a string instead of json and can’t be properly ‘Mashed’ by the Twitter gem. Also check http://github.com/jnunemaker/twitter/issues#issue/6.

Without diving into the bowels of the Twitter gem or HTTParty, you could ‘begin…rescue’ this error and try again in 5 minutes. I fixed it by overriding the offending code to return nil and checking for a nil response as follows:

module Twitter
  class Search
    def fetch(force=false)

      if @fetch.nil? || force
        query = @query.dup
        query[:q] = query[:q].join(' ')
        query[:format] = 'json' #This line is the hack and whole reason we're monkey-patching at all.

        response = self.class.get('http://search.twitter.com/search', :query => query, :format => :json)

        #Our patch: response should be a Hash. If it isnt, return nil.
        return nil if response.class != Hash

        @fetch = Mash.new(response)
      end

      @fetch
    end

  end
end

(adapted from http://github.com/jnunemaker/twitter/issues#issue/9)

If you have a better solution: speak up!