mastodon-post

The simplest possible CLI tool for posting to Mastodon, ideally suited for use in simple bots.

Usage

mastodon-post [OPTIONS] -text "text to post"

Options

• -text: Text to post. Required.
• -visibility: Visibility of the post. One of public, unlisted, or private. Defaults to public.
• -help: Print help and exit.
• -version: Print version and exit.

Credentials and Server Configuration

Credentials and the server's address are provided via the environment variables MASTODON_SERVER, MASTODON_CLIENT_ID, MASTODON_CLIENT_SECRET, and MASTODON_ACCESS_TOKEN.

MASTODON_SERVER is the URL of your Mastodon server (for example, https://mastodon.social).

To get a Client ID/Secret and Access Token:

1. Navigate to your Mastodon Preferences
2. Select "Developer" in the Sidebar
3. Click "New Application" at the top of the page
4. Enter a name for your application (for example, "mastodon-post")
5. Use urn:ietf:wg:oauth:2.0:oob for the Redirect URI
6. Deselect all scopes, then select only write:statuses
7. Click "Submit"
8. The following page will show your Client ID, Client Secret, and Access Token

You can optionally provide these environment variables by placing a .env file in the working directory from which you run mastodon-post. The program will read the file if it exists and set the environment variables automatically.

If running the program via Docker, you can pass the same file to the --env-file option.

An empty .env file is included in this repository to help you get started: .env.template.

Installation

macOS via Homebrew

brew install cdzombak/oss/mastodon-post

Debian via apt repository

Install my Debian repository if you haven't already:

sudo apt-get install ca-certificates curl gnupg
sudo install -m 0755 -d /etc/apt/keyrings
curl -fsSL https://dist.cdzombak.net/deb.key | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/dist-cdzombak-net.gpg
sudo chmod 0644 /etc/apt/keyrings/dist-cdzombak-net.gpg
echo -e "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/dist-cdzombak-net.gpg] https://dist.cdzombak.net/deb/oss any oss\n" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/dist-cdzombak-net.list > /dev/null
sudo apt-get update

Then install mastodon-post via apt-get:

sudo apt-get install mastodon-post

Manual installation from build artifacts

Pre-built binaries for Linux and macOS on various architectures are downloadable from each GitHub Release. Debian packages for each release are available as well.

Build and install locally

git clone https://github.com/cdzombak/mastodon-post.git
cd mastodon-post
make build

cp out/mastodon-post $INSTALL_DIR

Docker images

Docker images are available for a variety of Linux architectures from Docker Hub and GHCR. Images are based on the scratch image and are as small as possible.

Run them via, for example:

docker run --rm --env-file /path/to/.env cdzombak/mastodon-post:1 -text "message to post"
docker run --rm --env-file /path/to/.env ghcr.io/cdzombak/mastodon-post:1 -text "message to post"

Example Usage

See:

• sirens_tweetbot

About

• Issues: github.com/cdzombak/mastodon-post/issues
• Author: Chris Dzombak
  • GitHub: @cdzombak

License

MIT; see LICENSE in this repository.