Getting a list of your Twitter friends in Ruby/Rails while avoiding the Twitter rate limit error

GetTwitterFriends

First create the following definition.

def get_cursor_results(action, items, *args)
result = []
next_cursor = -1
until next_cursor == 0
begin
  t = @client.send(action, args[0], args[1], {:cursor => next_cursor})
  result = result + t.send(items)
  next_cursor = t.next_cursor
rescue Twitter::Error::TooManyRequests => error
    puts "Rate limit error, sleeping for #{error.rate_limit.reset_in} seconds...".color(:yellow)
    sleep error.rate_limit.reset_in
  retry
end
end
  return result  
end


Second gather your twitter friends using the following two lines

friends = get_cursor_results('friends', 'users', 'twitterusernamehere')
screen_names = friends.collect{|x| x.screen_name}