title: What is the proper "Rails Way" to consume a RESTful web service on another domain?
body: <p>I would like to write a Ruby on Rails application that consumes a RESTful web service API performs some logic on the result and then displays that data on my view.  For example, let's say I wanted to write a program that did a search on search.twitter.com.  Using pure ruby I might create the following method:</p>
  
  <pre><code>def run(search_term='', last_id=0)
    @results = []
    url = URI.parse("http://search.twitter.com")
    res = Net::HTTP.start(url.host, url.port) do |http|
      http.get("/search.json?q=#{search_term}&amp;since_id=#{last_id.to_s}")
    end
    @results = JSON.parse res.body
  end
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I'm tempted to just drop that method into my Rails controller as a private method, but part of me thinks that there is a better, more "Rails" way to do this.  Is there a best practice approach or is this really the best way?</p>