From cd9e2a2b84e2967caa80ab5ddb4586891518a20b Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: navanchauhan <navanchauhan@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 25 Dec 2022 20:20:25 -0500
Subject: blog2mastodon
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+---
+date: 2022-12-25 17:32
+description: Cross posting blog posts to Mastodon
+tags: Python, Mastodon
+---
+
+# Posting blogs as Mastodon Toots
+
+What is better than posting a blog post? Posting about your posting pipeline. I did this previously with [Twitter](/posts/2021-06-25-Blog2Twitter-P1.html).
+
+## the elephant in the room
+
+mastodon.social does not support any formatting in the status posts.
+Yes, there are other instances which have patches to enable features such as markdown formatting, but there is no upstream support.
+
+## time to code
+
+My website is built using a really simple static site generator I wrote in Python.
+Therefore, each post is self-contained in a Markdown file with the necessary metadata.
+
+I am going to specify the path to the blog post, parse it and then publish it.
+
+I initially planned on having a command line parser and some more flags.
+
+### interacting with mastodon
+
+I ended up using mastodon.py rather than crafting requests by hand. Each status_post/toot call returns a status_id that can be then used as an in_reply_to parameter.
+
+For the code snippets, seeing that mastodon does not support native formatting, I am resorting to using ray-so.
+
+### reading markdown
+
+I am using a bunch of regex hacks, and reading the blog post line by line.
+Because there is no markdown support, I append all the links to the end of the toot.
+For images, I upload them and attach them to the toot.
+The initial toot is generated based off the title and the tags associated with the post.
+
+```python
+# Regexes I am using
+
+markdown_image = r'(?:!\[(.*?)\]\((.*?)\))'
+markdown_links = r'(?:\[(.*?)\]\((.*?)\))'
+tags_within_metadata = r"tags: ([\w,\s]+)"
+metadata_regex = r"---\s*\n(.*?)\n---\s*\n"
+```
+
+This is useful when I want to get the exact data I want.
+In this case, I can extract the tags from the front matter.
+
+```python
+metadata = re.search(metadata_regex, markdown_content, re.DOTALL)
+if metadata:
+ tags_match = re.search(r"tags: ([\w,\s]+)", metadata.group(1))
+ if tags_match:
+ tags = tags_match.group(1).split(",")
+```
+
+### code snippet support
+
+I am running [akashrchandran/Rayso-API](https://github.com/akashrchandran/Rayso-API).
+
+```python
+import requests
+
+def get_image(code, language: str = "python", title: str = "Code Snippet"):
+ params = (
+ ('code', code),
+ ('language', language),
+ ('title', title),
+ )
+
+ response = requests.get('http://localhost:3000/api', params=params)
+
+ return response.content
+```
+
+### threads! threads! threads!
+
+Even though mastodon does officially have a higher character limit than Twitter.
+I prefer the way threads look.
+
+## result
+
+Everything does seem to work!
+Seeing that you are reading this on Mastodon, and that I have updated this section.
+
+<iframe src="https://mastodon.social/@navanchauhan/109577330116812393/embed" class="mastodon-embed" style="max-width: 100%; border: 0" width="400" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe><script src="https://static-cdn.mastodon.social/embed.js" async="async"></script>
+
+## what's next?
+
+Here is the current code:
+
+```python
+from mastodon import Mastodon
+from mastodon.errors import MastodonAPIError
+import requests
+import re
+
+mastodon = Mastodon(
+ access_token='reeeeee',
+ api_base_url="https://mastodon.social"
+ )
+
+url_base = "https://web.navan.dev"
+sample_markdown_file = "Content/posts/2022-12-25-blog-to-toot.md"
+
+tags = []
+toots = []
+image_idx = 0
+markdown_image = r'(?:!\[(.*?)\]\((.*?)\))'
+markdown_links = r'(?:\[(.*?)\]\((.*?)\))'
+
+def get_image(code, language: str = "python", title: str = "Code Snippet"):
+ params = (
+ ('code', code),
+ ('language', language),
+ ('title', title),
+ )
+
+ response = requests.get('http://localhost:3000/api', params=params)
+
+ return response.content
+
+class TootContent:
+ def __init__(self, text: str = ""):
+ self.text = text
+ self.images = []
+ self.links = []
+ self.image_count = len(images)
+
+ def __str__(self):
+ toot_text = self.text
+ for link in self.links:
+ toot_text += " " + link
+ return toot_text
+
+ def get_text(self):
+ toot_text = self.text
+ for link in self.links:
+ toot_text += " " + link
+ return toot_text
+
+ def get_length(self):
+ length = len(self.text)
+ for link in self.links:
+ length += 23
+ return length
+
+ def add_link(self, link):
+ if len(self.text) + 23 < 498:
+ if link[0].lower() != 'h':
+ link = url_base + link
+ self.links.append(link)
+ return True
+ return False
+
+ def add_image(self, image):
+
+ if len(self.images) == 4:
+ # will handle in future
+ print("cannot upload more than 4 images per toot")
+ exit(1)
+ # upload image and get id
+ self.images.append(image)
+ self.image_count = len(self.images)
+
+ def add_text(self, text):
+ if len(self.text + text) > 400:
+ return False
+ else:
+ self.text += f" {text}"
+ return True
+
+ def get_links(self):
+ print(len(self.links))
+
+
+in_metadata = False
+in_code_block = False
+
+my_toots = []
+text = ""
+images = []
+image_links = []
+extra_links = []
+tags = []
+
+code_block = ""
+language = "bash"
+
+current_toot = TootContent()
+
+metadata_regex = r"---\s*\n(.*?)\n---\s*\n"
+
+
+with open(sample_markdown_file) as f:
+ markdown_content = f.read()
+
+
+metadata = re.search(metadata_regex, markdown_content, re.DOTALL)
+if metadata:
+ tags_match = re.search(r"tags: ([\w,\s]+)", metadata.group(1))
+ if tags_match:
+ tags = tags_match.group(1).split(",")
+
+
+markdown_content = markdown_content.rsplit("---\n",1)[-1].strip()
+
+for line in markdown_content.split("\n"):
+ if current_toot.get_length() < 400:
+ if line.strip() == '':
+ continue
+ if line[0] == '#':
+ line = line.replace("#","".strip())
+ if len(my_toots) == 0:
+ current_toot.add_text(
+ f"{line}: a cross-posted blog post \n"
+ )
+ hashtags = ""
+ for tag in tags:
+ hashtags += f"#{tag.strip()},"
+ current_toot.add_text(hashtags[:-1])
+ my_toots.append(current_toot)
+ current_toot = TootContent()
+ else:
+ my_toots.append(current_toot)
+ current_toot = TootContent(text=f"{line.title()}:")
+ continue
+ else:
+ if "```" in line:
+ in_code_block = not in_code_block
+ if in_code_block:
+ language = line.strip().replace("```",'')
+ continue
+ else:
+ with open(f"code-snipped_{image_idx}.png","wb") as f:
+ f.write(get_image(code_block, language))
+ current_toot.add_image(f"code-snipped_{image_idx}.png")
+ image_idx += 1
+ code_block = ""
+ continue
+ if in_code_block:
+ line = line.replace(" ","\t")
+ code_block += line + "\n"
+ continue
+ if len(re.findall(markdown_image,line)) > 0:
+ for image_link in re.findall(markdown_links, line):
+ image_link.append(image_link[1])
+ # not handled yet
+ line = re.sub(markdown_image,"",line)
+ if len(re.findall(markdown_links,line)) > 0:
+ for link in re.findall(markdown_links, line):
+ if not (current_toot.add_link(link[1])):
+ extra_links.append(link[1])
+ line = line.replace(f'[{link[0]}]({link[1]})',link[0])
+ if not current_toot.add_text(line):
+ my_toots.append(current_toot)
+ current_toot = TootContent(line)
+ else:
+ my_toots.append(current_toot)
+ current_toot = TootContent()
+
+my_toots.append(current_toot)
+
+in_reply_to_id = None
+for toot in my_toots:
+ image_ids = []
+ for image in toot.images:
+ print(f"uploading image, {image}")
+ try:
+ image_id = mastodon.media_post(image)
+ image_ids.append(image_id.id)
+ except MastodonAPIError:
+ print("failed to upload. Continuing...")
+ if image_ids == []:
+ image_ids = None
+
+ in_reply_to_id = mastodon.status_post(
+ toot.get_text(), in_reply_to_id=in_reply_to_id, media_ids=image_ids
+ ).id
+
+```
+
+Not the best thing I have ever written, but it works!
+
+
+
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