lemmy-scheduled-post-bot

Make posts to Lemmy based on the next configured post in a TOML file.

1. Set up a configuration file as described below.
2. Run this program with that file as an argument, e.g. lemmy-scheduled-post-bot ./sample.toml.

This program then does the following:

1. Identifies the configured post whose publish time has most recently passed.
2. Checks to see if a post with the same instance/community/user/title has already been published, and if so exits early.
3. Publishes the post.

Note that this does not run as a service, and must be invoked directly to run. It's recommended to use in conjunction with cron or the Windows Task Scheduler.

Configuration

This program takes as an argument the filename of a TOML file. This TOML file can contain the following sections:

settings (required)

The [settings] section must contain the following fields:

• instance - The domain of an instance of Lemmy, i.e. "lemmy.world".
• community - The community on that instance to which to post.
• username_or_email - The login of the account that will make the post.
• password - The password of the account.
• enabled - If absent or false, the input file is validated but no server communication is attempted.

defaults (optional)

The [defaults] section can contain all the same fields as [[post]], and if a field is absent in the post, the default field's value is used.

post

One or more [[post]] sections can be supplied, each of which can contain the following fields:

• post_at (required) - A date and time when the post should be published. Should be a string in ISO 8601 format.
• title - The name of the post.
• body - The text content of the post in Markdown format.
• link - The URL content of the post.
• thumbnail - A URL to an image that should appear alongside the post.
• alt_text - A text description of the thumbnail.

Templating

The post fields support limited template substitution. Supply custom fields in the [defaults] or [[post]] sections, and reference them within the post fields within braces like so: "My name is {name}.". Templating is not recursive, and only the defined post fields will be interpolated. See sample.toml for a full example.

License

Copyright (C) 2024 Steven Vergenz Licensed under the terms of the General Public License 3.0 or later