Ruby Twitter gem followers method repeating 20 times rather than displaying first 20 followers

Question

so im using the ruby twitter gem and api in conjunction with omniauth, to log into twitter via a simple rails app, and return the first 20 followers of a user. The main piece of code to do this is a method in a lib file stating:

def followers
    client.followers.take(20)
end

For some reason, the app works perfectly locally, but after being deployed to heroku, it displays my first follower, 20 times repeated, as opposed to the first 20 followers. Any help would be appreciated. Here is my code:

I have a basic twitter api app in rails, which works perfectally locally, however when I pushed to Heroku it doesn't work and upon checking the logs there is an error saying uninitialized constant WelcomeController::TwitterApi. I can not find out how to rectify this. Many thanks.

lib/twitter_api.rb

class TwitterApi
  def initialize(user)
    @user = user
  end

  def our_public_tweets
    client.user_timeline(user, count: 1, exclude_replies: true, include_rts: false)
  end

  def followers
    client.followers.take(20)
  end

  private

  attr_reader :user

  def client
    @client ||= Twitter::REST::Client.new do |config|
      config.consumer_key = Rails.application.secrets.twitter_api_key
      config.consumer_secret = Rails.application.secrets.twitter_api_secret
      config.access_token = user.token
      config.access_token_secret = user.secret
    end
  end
end

application_controller.rb

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
  protect_from_forgery with: :exception

  def current_user
    @current_user ||= User.find(session[:user_id]) if session[:user_id]
  end

  # to enable the current_user variable to be used in the view file
  helper_method :current_user

end

welcome_controller.rb

class WelcomeController < ApplicationController

require 'twitter_api'

  def index
    @twitter_api = TwitterApi.new(current_user)
  end
end

views/welcome/index.html.erb

<div class="wrapper">
  <h1>OMNIAUTH AND TWITTER API</h1>

  <!-- <%= link_to "Sign in with Twitter", "/auth/twitter" %> -->
  <% if current_user %>
    <div id="sign_in_wrapper">
      <p id="sign_in">Signed in as <span><%= current_user.name %></span> </p>
      <%= image_tag current_user.profile_image, class: "profile_image" %>
      <p><%= link_to "Sign out", signout_path, id: "sign_out" %></p>
    </div>

    <div class="public_tweets">
      <p>Latest tweet from <%= current_user.name %>:</p>
      <% @twitter_api.our_public_tweets.each do |tweet| %>
        <% cache('our_public_tweets', expires_in: 6.hours) do %>
          <%= parsed_tweet(tweet) %>
        <% end %>
      <% end %>
    </div>

    <ul class="followers">
      <p>First 20 followers for <%= current_user.name %>:</p>
      <% @twitter_api.followers.each do |follower| %>
        <% cache('followers', expires_in: 6.hours) do %>
          <li><%= follower.name %></li>
          <hr>
        <% end %>
      <% end %>
    </ul>

  <% else %>

    <%= link_to "/auth/twitter", id: "link_button" do %>
      <i class="fa fa-twitter fa-3x"></i>
    <% end %>
    <p class="date">Click the twitter icon to sign in and view followers</p>

  <% end %>
</div>

models/user.rb

class User < ApplicationRecord
  def self.from_omniauth(auth_hash)
    #Look up the user or create them using keys in the auth hash
    user = where(provider: auth_hash.provider, uid: auth_hash.uid).first_or_create
    user.update(
      name: auth_hash.info.name,
      profile_image: auth_hash.info.image,
      twitter_user_name: auth_hash.info.nickname,
      token: auth_hash.credentials.token,
      secret: auth_hash.credentials.secret
    )
    user
  end

  # token and secret is what came back from omniauth and this was saved to the user database.
end

application_helper.rb

module ApplicationHelper

  def parsed_tweet(tweet)
    _parsed_tweet = tweet.text.dup

    tweet.urls.each do |entity|
      html_link = link_to(entity.display_url.to_s, entity.expanded_url.to_s, target: 'blank')
      _parsed_tweet.sub!(entity.url.to_s, html_link)
    end

    tweet.media.each do |entity|
      html_link = link_to(entity.display_url.to_s, entity.expanded_url.to_s, target: 'blank')
      _parsed_tweet.sub!(entity.url.to_s, html_link)
    end

    _parsed_tweet.html_safe
  end
end

Answer 1

There is your problem, incorrect caching.

    <% cache('followers', expires_in: 6.hours) do %>
      <li><%= follower.name %></li>
      <hr>
    <% end %>

When cache is empty, you don't find anything by key "followers". You take first follower and cache it with that key. And by the time you display the second follower, there is a usable cache entry already, so you use the cache, not second follower's data.

Same problem with your other blocks. I think you meant to cache entire loops, not individual elements.

For some reason, the app works perfectly locally

Because locally you have :null cache_store, I think.