4.7 KiB
Twoot
Twoot is a python script that mirrors tweets from a twitter account to a Mastodon account. It is simple to set-up on a local machine, configurable and feature-rich.
UPDATE XX DEC 2022 VERSION 3.0 config file / tomli dependency
Previous updates can be found in CHANGELOG.
Features
- Fetch timeline of given user from twitter.com (through nitter instance)
- Scrape html and format tweets for post on mastodon
- Emojis supported
- Upload images from tweet to Mastodon
- Optionally upload videos from tweet to Mastodon
- Specify maximum age of tweet to be considered
- Specify minimum delay before considering a tweet for upload
- Remember tweets already tooted to prevent double posting
- Optionally post reply-to tweets on the mastodon account
- Optionally ignore retweets
- Allows rate-limiting posts to Mastodon instance
Usage
twoot.py [-h] -t <twitter account> -i <mastodon instance> -m <mastodon account>
-p <mastodon password> [-r] [-s] [-u] [-v] [-a <max age in days)>]
[-d <min delay (in mins)>] [-c <max # of toots to post>]
Arguments
Assuming that the Twitter handle is @SuperDuperBot and the Mastodon account is @superduperbot@botsin.space
| Switch | Description | Example | Req |
|---|---|---|---|
| -t | twitter account name without '@' | SuperDuper |
Yes |
| -i | Mastodon instance domain name | botsin.space |
Yes |
| -m | Mastodon username | sd@example.com |
Yes |
| -p | Mastodon password | my_Sup3r-S4f3*pw |
Yes |
| -v | upload videos to Mastodon | N/A | No |
| -r | Post reply-to tweets (ignored by default) | N/A | No |
| -s | Skip retweets (posted by default) | N/A | No |
| -l | Remove link redirections | N/A | No |
| -u | Remove trackers from URLs | N/A | No |
| -a | Max. age of tweet to post (in days) | 5 |
No |
| -d | Min. age before posting new tweet (in minutes) | 15 |
No |
| -c | Max number of toots allowed to post (cap) | 1 |
No |
Notes
-l will follow every link included in the tweet and replace them with the url that the
resource is directly dowmnloaded from (if applicable). e.g. bit.ly/xxyyyzz -> example.com
Every link visit can take up to 5 sec (timeout) therefore this option will slow down
tweet processing.
When using the -v switch consider:
- whether the copyright of the content that you want to cross-post allows it
- the storage / transfer limitations of the Mastodon instance that you are posting to
- the upstream bandwidth that you may consume on your internet connection
Default max age is 1 day. Decimal values are OK.
Default min delay is 0 minutes.
No limitation is applied to the number of toots uploaded if -c is not specified.
Installation
Make sure python3 is installed.
Twoot depends on beautifulsoup4 and Mastodon.py python modules.
Only If you plan to download videos with the -v switch, are the additional dependencies required:
- Python module
youtube-dl2 - ffmpeg (installed with the package manager of your distribution)
pip install beautifulsoup4 Mastodon.py youtube-dl2
In your user folder, execute git clone https://gitlab.com/jeancf/twoot.git
to clone repo with twoot.py script.
Add command line to crontab. For example, to run every 15 minutes starting at minute 1 of every hour and process the tweets posted in the last 5 days but at least 15 minutes ago:
1-59/15 * * * * /path/to/twoot.py -t SuperDuperBot -i botsin.space -m superduperbot -p my_Sup3r-S4f3*pw -a 5 -d 15
Examples
Twoot is known to be used for the following feeds (older first):
- @internetofshit@botsin.space
- @hackaday@botsin.space
- @todayilearned@botsin.space
- @moznews@noc.social
- @hackster_io@noc.social
- @cnxsoft@noc.social
- @unrealengine@noc.social
- @phoronix@noc.social
- @uanews@fed.celp.de
Background
I started twoot when tootbot stopped working. Tootbot relied on RSS feeds from https://twitrss.me that broke when Twitter refreshed their web UI in July 2019.