Fetch your last commit using the GitHub API and Ruby/Rails

gistfile1.rb

  helper_method :get_last_commit
  def get_last_commit
    require "cobravsmongoose"
    require "open-uri"
    require "timeout"

    retries = 1
    response = "";

    begin
      Timeout::timeout(2){
        response = open("http://github.com/api/v1/xml/lennartkoopmann/scopeport-server/commits/master").read
      }
    rescue Timeout::Error
      retries -= 1
      if retries > 0
        sleep 0.42 and retry
      else
        return "Could not fetch commits"
      end
    end

    commits = CobraVsMongoose.xml_to_hash(response)

    author_name = commits["commits"]["commit"][0]["author"]["name"]["$"]
    message = commits["commits"]["commit"][0]["message"]["$"]
    url = commits["commits"]["commit"][0]["url"]["$"]
    date = commits["commits"]["commit"][0]["committed-date"]["$"]

    return "\"#{message}\" at #{date} by #{author_name} - <a href=\"#{url}\">more information</a>"
 end