FeedToMastodon

CommandLine client to read datafeeds and "toot" them to a mastodon instance.

Status and todo

Requirements and download

You need nothing preinstalled to run the software.
The releases are self contained and should not need any runtime.
Download, unpack, configure, use

Help? Bugs? Errors? But-I-Want-ToHaves!

I want to provide some help if you get errors or have feature requests. Create an issue, if you have bugs. Provide as much information there as possible. Please don't include your clientId,clientSecret oder tokens.

I created an account for this: @feedtomastodon@road42.social write me there.

How-to use

Logging

Step 0: Environment variables

There are two environment variables:

DEBUG=true is optional and tells the client to output debugLogs
FEEDTOMASTODON_CFG is important. This is the location of your configFile

First step - configfile location

Think about where to put your config file. Default is "feedtomastodon.cfg.json" in current folder.

If you want to change this set an environment variable called FEEDTOMASTODON_CFG to the relative or absolute name.

Protect and secure this file!

Example for Linux/MacOs

export FEEDTOMASTODON_CFG="/home/<user>/.feedtomastodon.cfg.json"

Second step - register with server

FeedToMastodon.Cli register --instance example.social

You will have to enter the email-address and the passwort of the account you want to use once. You must disable twofactor-authentication for this. After the application registration you may and should enable it again.

This command creates the configFile, registers the application with the instance and create an accessToken for later use.

Your credentials aren't saved anywhere and only sent to the instance-server to create a new accessToken.

Now your config looks something like that:

{
  "Instance": {
    "Name": "example.social",
    "ClientId": "<longString>",
    "ClientSecret": "<longString>",
    "AccessToken": "<longString>"
  },
  "Cache": {
    "ConnectionString": "/home/<user>/.feedtomastodon.cache.db",
    "MaxEntries": 1000,
    "MaxAge": "30.00:00:00"
  },
  "Toot": {
    "Visibiliy": "Public",
    "Template": "{feedname}: {title} - {published} ({link}) #news #rss",
    "DateFormatString": "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm"
  },
  "Feeds": [
  ]
}

Third step - Configure `Toot` layout

The toots can be configured like this:

"Toot": {
    "Visibiliy": "Public",
    "Template": "{feedname}: {title} - {published} ({link}) #news #rss",
    "DateFormatString": "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm"
}

Templatefields

Valid fields are:

{feedname}
{id}
{title}
{summary} (Atom only)
{description}
{link}
{published}
{lastUpdated}

Visibility

Valid values are:

Public
Direct
Unlisted
Private

DateFormatString

May contain everything from DateTime.ToString() in dotNet

Fourth step - Add feeds

RSS

A rss feed entry looks like this:

{
    "Name": "<yourFeedName>",
    "Type": "RSS",
    "ConnectionString": "<url>"
}

Atom

An atom feed entry looks like this:

{
    "Name": "<yourFeedName>",
    "Type": "Atom",
    "ConnectionString": "<url>"
}

Combined

put some of them into Feeds:

"Feeds": [
    {
        "Name": "<yourFeedName>",
        "Type": "RSS",
        "ConnectionString": "<url>"
    },
    {
        "Name": "<yourFeedName>",
        "Type": "Atom",
        "ConnectionString": "<url>"
    }
]

Overwrite `toot` defaults for feed

Just add a Toot object to your feed:

{
    "Name": "<yourFeedName>",
    "Type": "RSS",
    "ConnectionString": "<url>",
    "Toot": {
        "Visibiliy": "Public",
        "Template": "{feedname}: {title} - {published} ({link})",
        "DateFormatString": "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm"
    }
}

Fifth step - run

FeedToMastodon.Cli run

Why?

The existing projects available didn't solve my problems and I had some spare time.

But, why dotNet?

Because I can.

License

This software is licensed under the MIT license.

road42/FeedToMastodon