If This Then That (IFTTT) a platform for scripting interactions between web services, called "recipes." For example, it provides by default a recipe where if a specific twitter user sends a tweet, then that tweet will be posted to reddit. However, if the user is even moderately active, this can be overwhelming. Fortunately, the IFTTT platform allows for the triggers to be handles by customs actions. This application's purpose is to combine all the tweets into a single reddit post per day, by submitting the first tweet for the day and updating it as new ones come in.
This application is designed to run on google appengine. You will need to create a project in the google cloud dashboard, and you will need the Java 8 SDK and Maven installed locally. Also download and install the google cloud SDK https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/standard/java/download
Create an appengine project on Google's console, which as of this writing is located at https://console.cloud.google.com/ In pom.xml replace TODO_YOUR_APP_ID with your appengine project ID.
run gcloud init
To verify the environment is set up correct, run the application locally.
mvn clean package
mvn appengine:run
You'll need to temporarily disable your browser's protection against mixed http/https content. Click "Execute without OAuth." The server should return a 200 OK and a skeleton response.
All that's left is to replace various placeholders with your data, and send it to appengine.
- On reddit, register for an api key at https://www.reddit.com/prefs/apps/ Create an application of type "script" and for a uri put https://TODO_YOUR_APP_ID.appspot.com (with your appengine project ID)
- in src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/appengine-web.xml replace TODO_YOUR_REDIT_USER_NAME and TODO_YOUR_REDDIT_APP_CLIENT_ID. In src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/credentials.properties replace TODO_YOUR_REDDIT_USER_PASSWORD and TODO_YOUR_REDDIT_API_SECRET_KEY
- back in src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/appengine-web.xml replace TODO_SUBREDDIT_TO_POST_IN. You may replace TODO_TWITTER_USERNAME, or you can replace the whole value field in this line. This value will be used as title of the daily reddit post, and will have the date appended to the end of the title.
- open a password or random string generator and obtain two of them. Use of them for TODO_RANDOM_STRING
in src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/appengine-web.xml and the other for TODO_YOUR_SECRET_TOKEN in com/maxgalloway/twitterPoster/Endpoint/TweetEndpoint.java - publish to appengine with the following commands:
mvn clean package mvn endpoints-framework:openApiDocs gcloud endpoints services deploy target/openapi-docs/openapi.json mvn appengine:deploy - Create an IFTTT account and create a new applet.
- For the IF select "New tweet by a specific user"
- For the THAT search for "webhooks" and "Make a web request"
- URL: https://TODO_YOUR_APP_ID.appspot.com/_ah/api/twitterPoster/v1/tweet (replacing with your project id)
- Method: POST
- content type: application/json
- body: {"text":"{{Text}}", "link":"{{LinkToTweet}}", "extra":"TODO_YOUR_SECRET_TOKEN"}
- secret token is from (4) above - everything else is verbatim
And that's it! Hopefully you find this useful. I want to have a quick word about security before I let you go. You'll notice that the authentication scheme used here (sending a password in a POST body over HTTPS) is extremely minimal. I chose this scheme due to limitations from both IFTTT and appengine, and also because there is little damage that someone could do if that credential is compromised. All they could do is submit text posts to a subreddit as you. That's a risk I'm willing to accept, especially since I created another reddit account just for this application. However, if you fork this repo and build additional functionality, I would recommend looking into more robust authentication options suppored on appengine https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/standard/java/oauth/ (however these will not work with IFTTT).