Reddit-to-Twitter

• Copy top post of the day from a Subreddit to a Twitter account (I will never call it X!).

Setup

Setup a Linux Host

I'm using Ubuntu LTS on an Oracle Cloud VM. There are free-tiers available as of today. Google Compute and Amazon AWS are similar products. You can also roll your own host with an old PC or a Raspberry Pi. You'll need to know a bit of Linux CLI or you'll need to be ready to learn! Run these commands through the CLI.

Setup Git

1. Create a Github account.

2. Go here and install Git if you don’t have it already.

3. Assuming you're reading this on the repo page, select ‘fork’ to create a copy of it to your Github account.

4. From your new repo, select Code and then under Clone copy the HTTPS URL (e.g. https://github.com/SaltySOMAdmin/Reddit-To-Twitter.git) to download a local copy

5. Navigate to a folder you want a local copy of the repo to live, and clone the Github repo to your host:

   1. It's up to you where to put the repo - recommended in a folder like /home/YourUserAcct/Github/ or /home/YourUserAcct/. Once you clone the directory it will create a subfolder with the name of your fork.
   2. git clone <url>
      1. e.g. git clone https://github.com/SaltySOMAdmin/Reddit-To-Twitter.git

Install necessary software prerequisites:

1. Install Python3

    sudo apt install python3
   

2. Create a python virtual environment in a directory

    /usr/bin/python3 -m venv /home/ubuntu/Reddit-To-Twitter/
   

3. Use the virtual python3 environment

    source /home/ubuntu/Reddit-To-Twitter/bin/activate
   

4. Install Twitter SDK and other pre-reqs

    pip install tweepy
    
    pip install praw
   

Configure the script.

1. Create a file called config.py and save it in the same directory as your script. Enter Reddit and Twitter api credentials. Check out the example file for formatting.

2. Configure forward_log.sh with a Discord webhook if you want logs forwarded. Enter the webhook in a .txt in the same directory or directly into the code.

3. Setup a schedule to run

    crontab -e 
   
    #Twitter Post daily at noon
    
    0 17 * * * /bin/bash -c "source /home/ubuntu/Reddit-To-Twitter/bin/activate && python3 /home/ubuntu/Reddit-To-Twitter/topPostDay.py" >> /home/ubuntu/Reddit-To-Twitter/twitter_log.txt 2>&1 
    
    #upload Twitter logs to Discord
    
    5 17 * * * /home/ubuntu/Reddit-To-Twitter/forward_log.sh
   

Setup Continuous Deployment with Github Actions

Allows you to deploy your code via Github vs logging into the VPS and updating the code/uploading a new file. Allows for easier collaboration as well. I followed a guide similar to this one: https://docs.github.com/en/actions/use-cases-and-examples/deploying/deploying-with-github-actions