General info

Welcome to the Mastodon Bot project page. This project aims to provide a Mastodon bot that toots reminds and/or cross posts articles from an RSS feed. It's most useful for those "Don't forget we have a blog/patreon/etc" posts and/or cross posting from an announcements blog to an instance.

This was designed with the admin in mind and functionality will grow over time.

Features

• Ability to regularly post a toot + sub toots
• Ability to toot articles that are in an RSS feed
• Ability to hide toots behind CW text

Compatibility

• Mastodon 1.4.x

Requirements

• Python 3.x
• Mastodon.py Python module
• feedparser Python Module
• ruamel.yaml Python module
• argparse Python module (should be built in)
• sqlite3 Python module (should be built in)

Installation

1. Install the dependencies: pip3 install -r requirements.txt
2. Install the bot: python setup.py install
3. Run the bot: python .\toot_bot.py --config .\configs\config.yaml [init|login|toot|rss]

Testing

1. For development, install the bot with: python setup.py develop
2. Use pytest to run tests: python setup.py develop

Tooting

Reminder Toots

To send reminder toots take a look at 'configs/example_reminder.yaml' and do the following

1. Run python .\toot_bot.py --config .\configs\example_reminder.yaml init
2. Run python .\toot_bot.py --config .\configs\example_reminder.yaml toot

The above will initialize the configuration (including login, you'll be prompted for user/password) and then toot what has been setup in your config file.

You'll probably want to run the 2nd command on a schedule via cron for auto-tooting on a schedule

RSS Toots

To cross post RSS articles take a look at 'configs/example_rss.yaml' and do the following

1. Run python .\toot_bot.py --config .\configs\example_rss.yaml init
2. Run python .\toot_bot.py --config .\configs\example_rss.yaml rss

The above will initialize the configuration (including login, you'll be prompted for user/password) then toot the various articles from the RSS feed. BE CAREFUL, the cache will be empty to start and you might spam your instance if there are a large number of articles in the feed.

Note: the RSS cache will be initialized the first time you run the rss command

You'll probably want to run the 2nd command on a schedule via cron for cross posting on a schedule

You can also implement custom logic for filtering RSS feeds, take a look at configs/example_rss_custom_logic.yaml and custom_logic/example_custom_rss_include.py for ideas.

Welcome Bot

To welcome new users the first time they toot take a look at 'configs/example_welcome_config.yaml' and do the following

1. Run python .\toot_bot.py --config .\configs\example_welcome_config.yaml init
2. Run python .\toot_bot.py --config .\configs\example_welcome_config.yaml welcome

The above will initialize the configuration (including login, you'll be prompted for user/password) then toot a welcome message to any new users that toot and haven't been seen by the bot. It's a great way to say hello to new users of an instance. BE CAREFUL, the cache will be empty to start and you might spam your instance if there are a large number of existing toots.

Seriously, this is DANGEROUS if your instance has been around for a bit. You may want to try it in development first and/or create the sqlite database by hand and insert a row into toot_cache close to the current toot id of your instance.

Note: the welcome cache will be initialized the first time you run the welcome command

You'll probably want to run the 2nd command via the sample systemd unit file at configs/example_welcome_bot_service.

TOTP

If you're using a bot with an account that has 2FA / TOTP enabled you can pass the --totp option to init and login to make the init and login functions work correctly. There will be additional steps and you'll be prompted to complete the necessary steps.

Contributing

Contributions to this project are welcome and appreciated. Please create a pull request with any changes you'd like to see included. The developers(s) will review the pull request and make any necessary comments/approvals after review.

Please note all code and documentation (except libraries as appropriate) must be licensed according to the "Licensing" section of the README.

Licensing

Code

All code in this project is licensed under the GPLv3. The "GPLv3" file contains the full license.

Documentation

All documentation is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution, Non Commercial, Share Alike 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). The "CC_BY-NC-SA_4.0.html" file contains the full license.