ReadBot

ReadBot is a Slack bot that makes it easy to save books and articles to your Goodreads and Pocket accounts. Once you have connected your Goodreads/Pocket accounts, if you add a bookmark (🔖) reactji to a message containing a URL, it will add it to Goodreads if it is an Amazon URL, or Pocket if it is any other URL.

Setup

This app was written on Glitch, but is just a Node app, so can be run on any platform. There are some environment variables it relies on, namely:

SLACK_VERIFICATION_TOKEN
SLACK_ACCESS_TOKEN

You will need to create a Slack Bot to get these.

GOODREADS_DEVELOPER_KEY
GOODREADS_DEVELOPER_SECRET

Apply for a developer key on Goodreads.

POCKET_CONSUMER_KEY

Register an app on Pocket to get a consumer key.

If you are using Glitch, you can just put these values in the .env file. If you are running it on your own, take a look at this article for information on how to set up your own .env file.

If you are not using Glitch you will also need to create a .data directory for the sqlite3 database.

Usage

First, connect your accounts:

/readbot connect goodreads
/readbot connect pocket

Then add the bookmark reactji to any message containing a supported link (currently Amazon.com for books, or any other link for Pocket), and it will be saved to your account.

TODO

• Support for more URL types for Goodreads (i.e. other bookstores, Goodreads itself)
• Support for custom Goodreads shelfs (i.e. not just the default 'to-read')

Author

Brad Greenlee brad@footle.org