WHAT'S THIS?

This little Python script generates a simple HTML page out of a Mastodon archive (go to "Edit profile -> Import and Export -> Request archive").

Attached videos, audio files and images work as does content in general.

The output is a single HTML page with very little formatting.

IMPORTANT

This is a simplification of my Mastodon import plugin for the Static Site Generator Nikola.

You should not publish the results as the page doesn't differentiate between public and private posts and was just written due a community request.

If you intend to publish archived posts I recommend the import plugin mentioned above. The results are much more neat and customizable.

Enjoy.

USAGE

• request, download and unpack your Mastodon archive
• execute archive2html.py PATH_TO_ARCHIVE in a terminal, see available options below
• the output file is saved as outbox.html in the archive folder

OPTIONS

$ ./archive2html.py -h
usage: archive2html.py [-h] [-s] [-o] [-nb] path

convert Mastodon archive to simple HTML file

positional arguments:
  path             path to Mastodon archive

options:
  -h, --help       show this help message and exit
  -s, --summary    print verbose summary of the archive, other options are ignored
  -o, --original   generate link to original post (not shown by default)
  -nb, --noboosts  don't list links to boosts (shown by default)

-s

• this was a separate script in the original import plugin and analyzes the archive and dumbprints lots of numbers to the console you might be interested in such as

  • overall posts
  • boosted users
  • replied profiles
  • replies to profiles that are no longer available (profiles may be deleted or moved, or are muted/suspended or on muted/suspended instances on your instance)
  • broken conversations (original post of the reply is probably deleted, some users auto-delete old posts so this may probably be a common phenomenon).
  • publishing year
  • hashtags
  • likes
  • media attachments

• the script asks you if you want to check the availability of profiles with the most interactions; this process may take a while as the lookup will be executed just then

• executing the script running this -s option will not generate any output file

-o

• include links to the original posts (if the account is moved or deleted these will be deadlinks, of course)
• shows date and time of post
• is set to False by default, use this option to explicitly show this information

-nb

• contents of boosts are not saved in the archive, only links and authors to the original posts
• is set to True by default, use this option to suppress links to boosted posts

PAGE RESULT

• posts are dumped into a single page starting with the oldest divided by a horizontal line
• images and videos are set to a width of 600px
• the background color of media descriptions is "lightblue"
• the background color of boosts is "lightgreen"
• CWs are ignored, content is displayed just normally
• existing output pages will be overwritten