Tipsy Robot

Mastodon Bot written in swift model after the bot exercises demo'd in Mastodon Bot example from Daniel Shiffman's CodingTrain channel.

TODO's Back End

• retrieve a public endpoint
• log in using .env
• update with a text post once
• update with an image post once
• [] save logs to file instead of print
• update with an interval - within the program
• [] cancel timer update
• [] update with an interval - cron job
• open a stream that can see an auth requiring endpoint
• [] easy func to get results from in a window leading to a since "since last" style interaction.
• [] react to notification (mention, favorite, boost, mention/hashtag combo)
• [] can it run on Linux?

TODO's CLI

• [] begin a listening task
• [] document using a chron job
• [] move to its ubuntu home

Project Startup

Assumptions:

• You have an application token
• If using VSCODE extension sswg.swift-lang has been installed
• Swift 5.7 is installed on the machine (check with swift --version)
• A gitignore with the items in gitignore_example.txt (.env!!!)

Writing a New Bot:

If you'd like to start from scratch, here are the steps

1. Run the following commands to get the bot executable started and verify that it can build:

    mkdir your_bot_project_name
    cd your_bot_project_name
    swift package init --type executable
    swift run                                   #will see Hello, world! in console. 

2. Update the Package.swift to include ArgumentParser and TrunkLine or some other MastodonAPI library. See this projects Package.swift.

Since TrunkLine requires .macOS(.v12) for now, so does this example.

Also note that the reference to TrunkLine references a branch instead of a version number because it is my library and it's under development in tandem with this project. If working on a library at the same time as using it in a project swift package update forces your project to go fetch the newest version. If that still is not enough, delete the .build folder, but that may be an indicator

3. Note that the swift package init command created two directories (Sources/your_bot_project_name) and made a file called your_bot_project_name.swift in that file is a function that looks like:

    @main
    public struct your_bot_project_name {
        public private(set) var text = "Hello, World!"

        public static func main() {
            print(your_bot_project_name().text)
        }
    }

Some people change this and just have a main.swift file in the Sources/your_bot_project_name directory which then is the contents of their @main function.

Change the contents of that file to match the contents of hello_server_example.swift and try swift run. Your bot should have posted!

References & Resources

• Swift Command Line with Argument Parser
• https://www.swift.org/blog/argument-parser/
• https://swiftpackageindex.com/apple/swift-argument-parser/1.2.1/documentation/argumentparser/gettingstarted
• https://github.com/carlynorama/tipsy-robot