gistfile1.rb

class RssReader
	require 'timeout'
	
  def self.posts_for(feed_url, length=2, perform_validation=false)
	  posts = []
	 
	  retries = 42

    begin
      Timeout::timeout(5){
        begin
			    open(feed_url) do |rss|
			      posts = RSS::Parser.parse(rss, perform_validation).items
			    end
			    posts.each do |post|
			    	post.title.gsub!(/(http|https):\/\/[a-z0-9]+([\-\.]{1}[a-z0-9]+)*\.[a-z]{2,5}(([0-9]{1,5})?\/.*)?/ix) { |w| '<a href="' + w + '">' + w + '</a>' }
			    	post.title.gsub!(/@(\w+)/, '<a class="twitter_name" href="http://www.twitter.com/\\1">@\\1</a>')
			    	post.title.gsub!(/#(\w+)/, '<a class="twitter_hashtag" href="http://search.twitter.com/search?q=\\1">#\\1</a>') 
			    end
			    posts[0..length - 1] if posts.size > length
				rescue OpenURI::HTTPError => error
					posts << [post.title = 'No posts available', post.pubDate = Time.now]
				end 
     }
   rescue Timeout::Error
     retries -= 1
     if retries > 0
       sleep 0.42 and retry
     else
       posts << [post.title = 'Twitter is not available', post.pubDate = Time.now]
     end
   end
end
end