the code that runs a bot tweeting random cat-related items in the Digital Public Library of America. this is a rewrite of the original PHP code written in 2014 at LibHack in Philadelphia.
I tried to set this up so that this could be cloned + remixed as easily as possible. After cloning / remixing:
- the
.env
file will need to contain your DPLA API key, your twitter credentials, and a secret key that you create. - the
app-config.js
file contains things pertinent to your bot including: prefixed phrases, emoji, item title max-length, and the amount of items to keep track of so your bot doesn't run the risk of posting the same thing.
note, these files also contain this information + more in their respective comments.
so, this is a little annoying, but in order for this bot to tweet, you have
to poke it by means of a POST
request with a special header. this is so
visitors to your endpoint don't cause your bot to get flagged by twitter and/or
dpla. the beauty of this glitch thing is that you can easily rewrite the stuff in
server.js
to trigger a tweet whenever you want!
I have a cron job scheduled to send a curl
request to this app with the
special header running 3 times a day from a linode server.
so if, say, process.env.SECRET_TOKEN_VALUE === 'hi there! ^_^
, then:
curl -X POST -H "x-tweet-me-maybe: hi there! ^_^" https://yr-app-here.glitch.com/tweet
would trigger a tweet.
you can also use a third-party server-checking service to poke yr app! see the handy glitch/twitterbot project for suggestions
- tips!