Ask HN: Review my weekend project GitTwitIt | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Review my weekend project GitTwitIt

gittwitit.com

29 pointsjmathai21 comments

I wanted to familiarize myself with a nosql database. So I decided to use mongohq which is a hosted mongodb.

This site lets you send Twitter updates when you push to GitHub. GitHub provides similar functionality but it's pretty lame since you have to hand over your creds. OAuth ftw!

OAuth is great, but the app doesn't actually say what it's going to do with my Twitter account. Developers especially are wary of handing over access to their accounts (OAuth or not), so it might be good to summarise what your app will post before making the user authenticate.

Strongly agreed. "First, you'll need to login." Actually, first, I need to be told what this app does.

Haha, point taken. I always error (literally) on the side of conciseness. I'll add more verbage.

I added better messaging and error handling since Twitter seems to be really flakey this morning.

Is there a big difference with just using a hook like this one? http://gitorious.org/tweetthegit

Not necessarily. Setting up the hook on GitHub's end lets you not worry about having the proper hook set up on your laptop (I guess).

*err, not error

I did not know that! Seriously. May I recall all the times I've misused "error".

Yep, you may :D

"verbage" ~= verbiage?

Thanks, added some more verbage and error handling.

I think I'm missing something here - doesn't GitHub already support Twitter under their service hooks?

From below:

> GitHub provides similar functionality but it's pretty lame since you have to hand over your creds. OAuth ftw!

GitHub's similar functionality is open source:

https://github.com/pjhyett/github-services/blob/master/servi...

Fyi, as is this one:

http://github.com/jmathai/gittwitit

I'd never use it, but kudos for playing with a NoSQL database and making something neat. No better way to learn than by playing like this.

I didn't get past the first page (since I can't sign into Twitter @ work), but I have to agree that some explanation of what the service is first would be a huge help for conversion. Also, as a pet-peeve of mine, if you are going to link to CSS and XHTML validation, make sure your website validates (in this case it doesn't).

Heh, the design of the site I got from a decent free template site. I didn't bother to remove (or check for that matter) the validation links. I had assumed they validated :).

I have done that before. Not a problem, just something I check when I see it. Like your idea though, definitely will try it out once I get access to Twitter.

i really just want our dev email list to receive a post whenever someone pushes...

You can do that with GitHub already. Just go to the repository -> admin -> service hooks and set up the email one. Here's a pic of the screen: http://share.kyleneath.com/captures/Service_Hooks_for_kneath...

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