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<h1 id="posting-blog-posts-as-twitter-threads-part-1n">Posting Blog Posts as Twitter Threads Part 1/n</h1>
<p>Why? Eh, no good reason, but should be fun.</p>
<h2 id="plan-of-action">Plan of Action</h2>
<p>I recently shifted my website to a static site generator I wrote specifically for myself.
Thus, it should be easy to just add a feature to check for new posts, split the text into chunks for Twitter threads and tweet them.
I am not handling lists or images right now.</p>
<h2 id="time-to-code">Time to Code</h2>
<p>First, the dependency: tweepy for tweeting.</p>
<p><code>pip install tweepy</code></p>
<div class="codehilite">
<pre><span></span><code><span class="kn">import</span> <span class="nn">os</span>
<span class="kn">import</span> <span class="nn">tweepy</span>
<span class="n">consumer_key</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">os</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">environ</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="s2">"consumer_key"</span><span class="p">]</span>
<span class="n">consumer_secret</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">os</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">environ</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="s2">"consumer_secret"</span><span class="p">]</span>
<span class="n">access_token</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">os</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">environ</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="s2">"access_token"</span><span class="p">]</span>
<span class="n">access_token_secret</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">os</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">environ</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="s2">"access_token_secret"</span><span class="p">]</span>
<span class="n">auth</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">tweepy</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">OAuthHandler</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">consumer_key</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">consumer_secret</span><span class="p">)</span>
<span class="n">auth</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">set_access_token</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">access_token</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">access_token_secret</span><span class="p">)</span>
<span class="n">api</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">tweepy</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">API</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">auth</span><span class="p">)</span>
</code></pre>
</div>
<p>The program need to convert the blog post into text fragments.</p>
<p>It reads the markdown file, removes the top YAML content, checks for headers and splits the content.</p>
<div class="codehilite">
<pre><span></span><code><span class="n">tweets</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="p">[]</span>
<span class="n">first___n</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="mi">0</span>
<span class="k">with</span> <span class="nb">open</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">sample_markdown_file</span><span class="p">)</span> <span class="k">as</span> <span class="n">f</span><span class="p">:</span>
<span class="k">for</span> <span class="n">line</span> <span class="ow">in</span> <span class="n">f</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">readlines</span><span class="p">():</span>
<span class="k">if</span> <span class="n">first___n</span> <span class="o"><=</span> <span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">:</span>
<span class="k">if</span> <span class="n">line</span> <span class="o">==</span> <span class="s2">"---</span><span class="se">\n</span><span class="s2">"</span><span class="p">:</span>
<span class="n">first___n</span> <span class="o">+=</span> <span class="mi">1</span>
<span class="k">continue</span>
<span class="n">line</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">line</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">strip</span><span class="p">()</span>
<span class="n">line</span> <span class="o">+=</span> <span class="s2">" "</span>
<span class="k">if</span> <span class="s2">"#"</span> <span class="ow">in</span> <span class="n">line</span><span class="p">:</span>
<span class="n">line</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">line</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">replace</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"#"</span><span class="p">,</span><span class="s2">""</span><span class="p">)</span>
<span class="n">line</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">strip</span><span class="p">()</span>
<span class="n">line</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="s2">"</span><span class="se">\n</span><span class="s2">"</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="n">line</span>
<span class="n">line</span> <span class="o">+=</span> <span class="s2">"</span><span class="se">\n\n</span><span class="s2">"</span>
<span class="k">try</span><span class="p">:</span>
<span class="k">if</span> <span class="nb">len</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">tweets</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="o">-</span><span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">])</span> <span class="o"><</span> <span class="mi">260</span> <span class="ow">and</span> <span class="p">(</span><span class="nb">len</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">tweets</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="o">-</span><span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">])</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="nb">len</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">line</span><span class="p">))</span> <span class="o"><=</span> <span class="mi">260</span><span class="p">:</span>
<span class="n">tweets</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="o">-</span><span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">]</span> <span class="o">+=</span> <span class="n">line</span>
<span class="k">else</span><span class="p">:</span>
<span class="n">tweets</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">append</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">line</span><span class="p">)</span>
<span class="k">except</span> <span class="ne">IndexError</span><span class="p">:</span>
<span class="k">if</span> <span class="nb">len</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">line</span><span class="p">)</span> <span class="o">></span> <span class="mi">260</span><span class="p">:</span>
<span class="nb">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"ERROR"</span><span class="p">)</span>
<span class="k">else</span><span class="p">:</span>
<span class="n">tweets</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">append</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">line</span><span class="p">)</span>
</code></pre>
</div>
<p>Every status update using tweepy has an id attached to it, for the next tweet in the thread, it adds that ID while calling the function.</p>
<p>For every tweet fragment, it also appends 1/n.</p>
<div class="codehilite">
<pre><span></span><code><span class="k">for</span> <span class="n">idx</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">tweet</span> <span class="ow">in</span> <span class="nb">enumerate</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">tweets</span><span class="p">):</span>
<span class="n">tweet</span> <span class="o">+=</span> <span class="s2">" </span><span class="si">{}</span><span class="s2">/</span><span class="si">{}</span><span class="s2">"</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">format</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">idx</span><span class="o">+</span><span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">,</span><span class="nb">len</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">tweets</span><span class="p">))</span>
<span class="k">if</span> <span class="n">idx</span> <span class="o">==</span> <span class="mi">0</span><span class="p">:</span>
<span class="n">a</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="kc">None</span>
<span class="n">a</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">api</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">update_status</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">tweet</span><span class="p">)</span>
<span class="k">else</span><span class="p">:</span>
<span class="n">a</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">api</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">update_status</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">tweet</span><span class="p">,</span><span class="n">in_reply_to_status_id</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="n">a</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">id</span><span class="p">)</span>
<span class="nb">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="nb">len</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">tweet</span><span class="p">),</span><span class="n">end</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="s2">" "</span><span class="p">)</span>
<span class="nb">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"</span><span class="si">{}</span><span class="s2">/</span><span class="si">{}</span><span class="se">\n</span><span class="s2">"</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">format</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">idx</span><span class="o">+</span><span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">,</span><span class="nb">len</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">tweets</span><span class="p">)))</span>
</code></pre>
</div>
<p>Finally, it replies to the last tweet in the thread with the link of the post.</p>
<div class="codehilite">
<pre><span></span><code><span class="n">api</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">update_status</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s2">"Web Version: </span><span class="si">{}</span><span class="s2">"</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">format</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">post_link</span><span class="p">))</span>
</code></pre>
</div>
<h2 id="result">Result</h2>
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-dnt="true" data-theme="dark"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Posting Blog Posts as Twitter Threads Part 1/n <br><br> Why? Eh, no good reason, but should be fun. <br> Plan of Action <br><br> I recently shifted my website to a static site generator I wrote specifically for myself. 1/5</p>— Navan Chauhan (@navanchauhan) <a rel="noopener" target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/navanchauhan/status/1408165730487443456?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 24, 2021</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-theme="dark"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Web Version: <a rel="noopener" target="_blank" href="https://t.co/zROU1F5DYv">https://t.co/zROU1F5DYv</a></p>— Navan Chauhan (@navanchauhan) <a rel="noopener" target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/navanchauhan/status/1408168879617052674?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 24, 2021</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
<h2 id="whats-next">What's Next?</h2>
<p>For the next part, I will try to append the code as well.
I actually added the code to this post after running the program.</p>
<blockquote>If you have scrolled this far, consider subscribing to my mailing list <a href="https://listmonk.navan.dev/subscription/form">here.</a> You can subscribe to either a specific type of post you are interested in, or subscribe to everything with the "Everything" list.</blockquote>
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