postodon

Randomly posts things to Mastadon from a pre-defined list, using the Mastodon API.

The list of posts is a JSON file:

[
    {"content": "Text of the post", "id": 1, "status": "unposted"},
    ...,
]

The command postodon randomly selects an unposted post, posts it to Mastodon, and marks it as posted in the list. If there are no unposted items, an already- posted item is used instead.

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Requirements

Postodon requires Python 3.7+. It is tested on Linux and macOS.

Installation

Postodon is published as a Python package and can be installed with pipx (recommended), or pip within a virtual environment. Open up a terminal and install with:

pipx install postodon

Configuration

• Register an application on Mastodon as described here: https://docs.joinmastodon.org/client/token/#app

• Get an access token as described here: https://docs.joinmastodon.org/client/authorized/#flow

• Securely store the returned access_token for future reference

• Run postodon init to create an empty config file (note the location)

• Edit the config file to point to the name of the Mastodon instance (e.g. botsin.space) and the path to the posts file, e.g. /path/to/posts.json

• Put the access token in an environment variable called AUTH_TOKEN

  export AUTH_TOKEN=<your_access_token_here>

Usage

To publicly post a random post from the list (marked as English), and update the list (i.e. mark the post having been posted):

postodon

This is a shortcut for postodon post. NB if there are no unposted items left in the list, a randomly-selected item from the 'posted' selection will be posted instead.

To randomly select an item from the list without either updating the list or posting (dry-run mode):

postodon post -n

To add new posts to the list for future posting:

postodon add "Text of post"

Development

To contribute to this library, first checkout the code. Then create a new virtual environment:

cd postodon
python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate

Now install the dependencies and test dependencies:

pip install -e '.[dev,tests]'

To run the tests:

pytest