There have been a few threads in /r/redditdev regarding an easy way to automatically submit a post at a given time. This is a simple Python script to cover that need!
This script uses Python 3.6 and has only one dependency: PRAW. This is the API Wrapper used for interfacing with the Reddit API. It can be installed with pip:
$ pip3 install praw
More information about installing PRAW can be found here: http://praw.readthedocs.io/en/latest/getting_started/installation.html
Most of the work is done in the config.txt file.
This script uses a configuration file to determine the account credentials. The contents of
the config.txt file are as follows:
username= <-- the username of the account
password= <-- the password for that account
client-id= <-- the "client id" for the Reddit account
client-secret= <-- the "client secret" associated with the Reddit account
subreddit= <-- the subreddit where the post should go
A quick note here: Fields such as username and subreddit do not include the common
slashes. For example, the username should be username instead of /u/username, and the
subreddit should be like redditdev rather than /r/redditdev.
In order to make your account access the Reddit API, it must be a developer account. This can be done by going into account preferences, then click apps. This panel should allow you to create a bot for the account and get the ID and Secret. A good guide can be found here:
http://progur.com/2016/09/how-to-create-reddit-bot-using-praw4#registering-the-bot
This script uses the supplied content.txt file for the content of the submission. Edit
this file in your favorite text editor. Remember, Reddit's posts use Markdown for formatting!
Plenty of information about can be found online.
The first line of this file will be the title of the post. Anything after that is the content
of the submission! Here's an example content.txt file to help:
Hello world!
This is the body of your submission. Anything following the
first line of this file will be included in your post. Have fun!
Here the title will be Hello world! and the body will be This is the body... and everything
after that.
This script is intended to run on a Linux (or Mac) based computer using the crontab service. This can easily be accomplished using a Desktop, Raspberry Pi, or a service such as Amazon AWS.
Open a terminal and clone this repository into your working directory:
$ git clone https://github.com/rleonard21/reddit-easy-post.git
Then edit your crontab by running the following command:
$ crontab -e
When the crontab file opens in the text editor, enter the following at the bottom:
min hr day mon dow python3 /full/path/post-cron.py
Where min, hr, day, mon, and dow represent the time at which to run the script.
How to set up the time will not be explained here, as it is covered in
many other resources:
http://www.adminschoice.com/crontab-quick-reference
Once this is setup on crontab, the Reddit account will post by itself at the specific intervals!
Something that I've found useful a few times is the ability to post only once at a certain time.
This can be done using the at tool in Linux. Installation is as such:
$ sudo apt-get install at
And setting up the one-time post is just as easy:
$ echo "python3 /full/path/post-cron.py" | at 9:00AM
A good walkthrough of at can be found here:
https://tecadmin.net/one-time-task-scheduling-using-at-commad-in-linux/
If you setup the script and wanted it to post something different, all that needs to be done is to modify the material inside of content.txt.
When the bot posts next, it will use the updated content in the file.