Posting From the Command Line on Open Social Networks

You can post to your open social media timelines from the command line using API access. Why would you want to do this?

• Script automated postings.
• Bots
• Post from terminal environments.
• Post from wherever else you are without having to go to the social media site or to the client that you use to access it.
• Trigger postings via voice command (what I do).

On GNU Social

Here is the basic format for the command to post a message to a Statusnet / GNU Social timeline:

curl -s --basic --user <username:password> --data status="Hello World" --output /dev/null https://instance.domain.com/api/statuses/update.xml

And here is the script I use to post a message to my timeline, launched by a blather voice command:

#!/bin/bash

# SN account info
user=johndoe
pass='password123'

# a place to store the text message 
text=/tmp/message.txt

# Virtual keystrokes to copy selected text to the clipboard
xdotool key Control+c

# pipe text out of clipboard into the text file
xclip -o > $text

# rest for half a sec
sleep .5

curl -s --basic \
--user $user:$pass \
--data status="$(cat "$text")" \
--output /dev/null \
https://instance.domain.com/api/statuses/update.xml 

rm $text

exit 0

On Pump.io

On pump.io you have to install the pump.io software on your computer. You don't have to be running a server, you just have to have the binaries so that you can run the commands. I will not go into how this is done on this podcast, but there's a link to the pump.io website below and there should be installation instructions available there. Once you have the software installed, you also have to allow command-line access to your account and get the token for authentication, maybe authorize the user too:

pump-register-app -s instance.domain.com -P 443 -t CLI

pump-authorize -s instance.domain.com -P 443 -u username

Finally you can post to your timeline from the command line:

pump-post-note -s instance.domain.com -P 443 -p -u username -n "Hello World."

My script to post a message to the pump.io timeline, launched by a blather voice command:

#!/bin/bash

# a place to put the text. 
text=/tmp/message.txt

# --------------------------------
# Since markdown is possible, I run 
# the text through markdown to get
# a bit of formatting and save it
# as a separate file 
# --------------------------------
pump=/tmp/pump.txt

# Virtual keystrokes to copy selected text to the clipboard
xdotool key Control+c

# pipe text out of clipboard into the text file
xclip -o > $text

# run Markdown
markdown $text > $pump

# Post message
pump-post-note -s instance.domain.com -P 443 -p -u username -n "$(cat $pump)"

sleep 1

rm $text
rm $pump

exit 0

Links

• GNU social: https://gnu.io/
• https://identi.ca/ (a pump.io network)
• pump.io Clients: https://github.com/e14n/pump.io/wiki/Clients
• My Screencast demonstrating the use of blather voice command to post to a timeline https://youtu.be/IJyzF_-6S2o