social-publish

In implementing POSE (publish on your own site, syndicate elsewhere) I need to publish to multiple social networks. I'm using ifttt.com, but it doesn't do a good job — their LinkedIn integration is most often broken, and Bluesky integration is currently missing.

This project is the start of a simple tool to publish my content to multiple social networks.

• X (Twitter), Mastodon, and Bluesky support is implemented, LinkedIn is planned (currently supported via an RSS feed meant for ifttt.com)
• Image upload is supported, with alt-text included 😊
• Also exports an RSS feed, meant for automation via ifttt.com

Table of Contents

• Self-hosting
  • Bluesky credentials
  • Mastodon credentials
  • Twitter setup
• Usage
  • RSS feed
• Developing
• License

Self-hosting

My docker-compose setup:

version: '3.8'

services:
  # ...
  social-publish:
    container_name: social-publish
    image: ghcr.io/alexandru/social-publish:latest
    restart: always
    healthcheck:
      test: ['CMD-SHELL', 'curl --head http://localhost:3000/ || exit 1']
    ports:
      - '3000:3000'
    env_file:
      - ./envs/social-publish.env
    networks:
      - external_network

Where ./envs/social-publish.env contains:

# Where the server is hosted — needed for correctly generating an RSS feed
BASE_URL="https://your-hostname.com"

# The server's Basic AUTH credentials
SERVER_AUTH_USERNAME="your-username"
SERVER_AUTH_PASSWORD="your-password"

# Bluesky credentials
BSKY_HOST="https://bsky.social"
BSKY_USERNAME="your-username"
BSKY_PASSWORD="your-password"

# Mastodon credentials
MASTODON_HOST="https://mastodon.social"
MASTODON_ACCESS_TOKEN="your-access-token"

# YouTube Oauth1 key and secret (Consumer Keys in the Developer Portal)
TWITTER_OAUTH1_CONSUMER_KEY="Api Key"
TWITTER_OAUTH1_CONSUMER_SECRET="Api Secret Key"

# Used for authentication (https://jwt.io)
JWT_SECRET="random string"

Bluesky credentials

For Bluesky, you'll need an "app password".

• Go here to create one: https://bsky.app/settings/app-passwords
• Copy the password
• Set the BSKY_PASSWORD environment variable to it

Keep it safe, as it grants access to everything.

Mastodon credentials

For Mastodon, you'll need an "access token". Here's how to get one:

• Go to: https://mastodon.social/settings/applications
• Create a "New Application"
• Select write:statuses and write:media for permissions, and unselect everything else
• Click on the newly created application
• Copy "your access token"
• Set the MASTODON_ACCESS_TOKEN environment variable to it

Twitter setup

For Twitter, we're working with Oauth1.

• Go to: https://developer.twitter.com/en/portal/projects-and-apps
• Create a project and app
• In the "Keys and tokens" section of the app, generate "Consumer Keys" and copy the generated "App Key and Secret"
• In the app's settings, go to "User authentication settings" and add as the "Callback URL": https://<your-domain.com>/api/twitter/callback (replace <your-domain.com> with your domain, obviously)
• Set the TWITTER_OAUTH1_CONSUMER_KEY and the TWITTER_OAUTH1_CONSUMER_SECRET environment variables
• Once the server is running, go to https://<your-domain.com>/account and click on "Connect Twitter"

Usage

The available requests for creating a new post are exemplified in test.http.

You can then configure ifttt.com. When adding an "action" to your applet, search for "make a web request".

Or, if you open the webpage in a browser (e.g., http://localhost:3000/), you can use this form:

---

RSS feed

While this service is able to publish directly to Mastodon and Bluesky, for other social networks you can use the RSS feed, exposed at /rss (e.g., http://localhost:3000/rss) in combination with ifttt.com.

Developing

To start the development server (with incremental compilation, powered by Vite):

npm run dev

You can then navigate to http://localhost:3001 for the frontend, while the backend is available at http://localhost:3000.

To build and test the Docker image locally:

make run-local

See the Makefile for more commands.

License

MIT (see LICENSE.txt)