Getting data out of a JSON Response in Rails 3 - ruby-on-rails

Question

So I am trying to pull tweets off of Twitter at put them into a rails app (Note because this is an assignment I can't use the Twitter Gem) and I am pretty confused.
I can get the tweets I need in the form of a JSON string but I'm not sure where to go from there. I know that the Twitter API call I'm making returns a JSON array with a bunch of Tweet objects but I don't know how to get at the tweet objects. I tried JSON.parse but was still unable to get the required data out (I'm not sure what that returns). Here's the code I have so far, I've made it pretty clear with comments/strings what I'm trying for. I'm super new to Rails, so this may be way off for what I'm trying to do.
def get_tweets
require 'net/http'
uri = URI("http://search.twitter.com/search.json?q=%23bieber&src=typd")
http = Net::HTTP.new(uri.host, uri.port)
request = Net::HTTP::Get.new(uri.request_uri)
response = http.request(request)
case response
when Net::HTTPSuccess then #to get: text -> "text", date: "created_at", tweeted by: "from_user", profile img url: "profile_img_url"
JSON.parse(response.body)
# Here I need to loop through the JSON array and make n tweet objects with the indicated fields
t = Tweet.new(:name => "JSON array item i with field from_user", :text "JSON array item i with field text", :date => "as before" )
t.save
when Net::HTTPRedirection then
location = response['location']
warn "redirected to #{location}"
fetch(location, limit - 1)
else
response.value
end
end
Thanks!

Answer 1

The JSON.parse method returns a ruby hash or array representing the json object.
In your case, the Json is parsed as a hash, with the "results" key (inside that you have your tweets), and some meta data: "max_id", "since_id", "refresh_url", etc. Refer to twitter documentation for a description on the fields returned.
So again with your example it would be:
parsed_response = JSON.parse(response.body)
parsed_response["results"].each do |tweet|
t = Tweet.new(:name => tweet["from_user_name"], :text => tweet["text"], :date => tweet["created_at"])
t.save
end