Dashtag Solo is a rails application which uses the Dashtag Engine that can be configured and deployed onto heroku very rapidly.
The Dashtag Engine pulls tweets and instagram post based on hashtag(s) and/or username(s) and displays them using masonry.
The application uses Twitter's REST API and Instagram's REST API. Please note this is not an exhaustive list of all tweets/instagrams with a particular hashtag.
Check out an example of Dashtag here.
Simply put the environment variables, as described below, into Heroku's dashboard after hitting the Deploy to Heroku Button above.
Currently the application uses the following variables in the environment:
- HEADER_TITLE (default: user's hashtags separated by spaces)
- HEADER_LINK (default: will link to top of page)
- HEADER_COLOR (default: #EFEFEF)
- BACKGROUND_COLOR (default: #EFEFEF)
- FONT_FAMILY (default: Open Sans, sans-serif)
- POST_COLOR_1 (default: #B11C54)
- POST_COLOR_2 (default: #F78F31)
- POST_COLOR_3 (default: #80C9D2)
- POST_COLOR_4 (default: #B5B935)
- HASHTAGS
- TWITTER_USERS
- INSTAGRAM_USERS
- INSTAGRAM_USER_IDS
- CENSORED_WORDS
- CENSORED_USERS
- API_RATE (default: 6 seconds * hashtag_count)
- TWITTER_BEARER_CREDENTIALS
- INSTAGRAM_CLIENT_ID
- DISABLE_RETWEETS (default: true)
- DB_ROW_LIMIT (default: 8000)
To add a custom page title to your feed as well as a header title, you set:
HEADER_TITLE=My Custom Title
If no title is provided the default title will be set as the user's hashtags separated by spaces. For example, for the given HASHTAGS=peace|love|happiness, the header title will display
#peace #love #happiness
To add an external link to your header title, you set:
HEADER_LINK=https://www.google.com
- You must use absolute urls for links to work.
To add a custom header color, you set:
HEADER_COLOR="#B11C54" or "maroon" or "rgba(250,0,0,0.2)"
To add custom colors for the post background, you can set:
POST_COLOR_1="#B11C54" or "maroon" or "rgba(250,0,0,0.2)"
To add custom background page color, you can set:
BACKGROUND_COLOR="#B11C54" or "maroon" or "rgba(250,0,0,0.2)"
- All color values must be wrapped in quotes!
To change the text font of the feed, you can set:
FONT_FAMILY=Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif
- The font_family input must not have quotes and can be separated by commas as shown above
Hashtags should be set to the text of the hashtag excluding the initial '#'. So if you wanted all of the posts with the "#peace" on Twitter, you set:
HASHTAGS=peace
If you want to see posts for multiple hashtags, simply delimit them with "|", like so
HASHTAGS=peace|love|happiness
If you want to see posts for specific Twitter Users, simply delimit them with "|", like so
TWITTER_USERS=screen_name|twitter_user|happy_user
- You may use INSTAGRAM_USERS and/or INSTAGRAM_USER_IDS to determine which Instagram users to follow.
If you want to see posts for specific Instagram Users by user_name, simply delimit them with "|", like so
INSTAGRAM_USERS=kingjames|trey5
If you want to see posts for specific Instagram Users by user_id, simply delimit them with "|", like so
INSTAGRAM_USER_IDS=19410587|18808100
To prevent from storing posts with certain words set the environment variable CENSORED_WORDS to the words you dont want to include in the .env file. For example, to censor posts that contain the word, "question", add the following line in the .env file:
CENSORED_WORDS=questions
If you want censor multiple words, simply delimit them with "|", like so
CENSORED_WORDS=questions|answers|censored
To prevent from storing posts from certain users set the environment variable CENSORED_USERS to the users you dont want to include in the .env file. For example, to censor posts by the author, "badGuy", add the following line in the .env file:
CENSORED_USERS=badGuy
If you want to censor multiple users, simply delimit them with "|", like so
CENSORED_USERS=badGuy|UglyDog
If you don't want to censor users or words, simply don't put CENSORED_USERS or CENSORED_WORDS in the .env file.
"API_RATE" allows the user to set the interval at which the application calls the Twitter/Instagram API. The default rate is used to remain under the maximum request limit for both social media APIs for standard credentials. A user may change the rate in seconds (at the risk of exceeding the request limit and being temporary timed out), like so:
API_RATE=15
Refer to Twitter API Limits here.
Refer to Instagram API Limits here.
Twitter Bearer Credentials should be set to the Twitter Key followed by a colon and the Twitter secret, like so:
TWITTER_BEARER_CREDENTIALS=your_twitter_key:your_twitter_secret
To find the key and secret for your app follow these directions. This will require you to register your own Twitter application. Also, in case you were wondering, the application uses application-only authentication.
Instagram Client Id should be set to the client id you get back from registering your application with Instagram. Where it prompts for Website and OAuth redirect_uri: and you will need to put your site's address. You should not need to change the defaults for Disable implicit OAuth or Enforce signed header. You only need the CLIENT_ID that they give you, not the secret or anything else.
The application by default does not capture retweet posts from twitter. To capture retweets, set the DISABLE_RETWEETS, environment variable to 'false'.
The application by default limits the amount of posts saved in the db to 8000. Once that limit is reached for each new post added the oldest post determined by the time it was posted on instagram/twitter (and not when it was entered into the db) is deleted. To change the limit, set DB_ROW_LIMIT to the number of rows you would prefer.
Background colors of the posts can also be customized by setting COLOR_1, COLOR_2, COLOR_3, and COLOR_4 to the hexidecimal(starting with the '#'). By default the colors are "#B11C54", "#F78F31", "#80C9D2", and "#B5B935".
To set up the application locally you should first create a new file called .env in the root dir of the app. After pulling the app into a local repository on your machine, create a .env file at the root of your repository. This is where you can set environment variable that will be available to your application, but ignored by git (thanks to dotenv).
Your final .env file should look like this:
HASHTAG=peace
CENSORED_WORDS=dictatorship|wowza|more
TWITTER_BEARER_CREDENTIALS=YOUR_TWITTER_KEY:YOUR_TWITTER_SECRET
INSTAGRAM_CLIENT_ID=YOUR_INSTAGRAM_CLIENT_ID_CODE
(You may skip this step and proceed to running the app locally if you do not want to use a virtual box)
Download Vagrant from (https://www.vagrantup.com/downloads) (vagrant will be added to system path and be available from the command line)
Download VirtualBox from (https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads) (provider for Vagrant)
In the root directory of your app, run the following commands to spin up your box:
$ vagrant up (this may take a while)
$ vagrant ssh
Proceed to next steps to run the app, and if everything worked you should be able to see the application at http://localhost:4000/ in your favorite browser.
Once you have the .env file setup, run bundler from the command line:
$ bundle
create/migrate the database:
$ rake db:create && rake db:migrate
and start the server:
$ rails s
If everything worked you should be able to see the application at work at http://localhost:3000/ in your favorite browser.
The testing framework used is Rspec and Capybara. To run them:
$ rspec