this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2023
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Our Southern cousins in Sydney and Melbourne have daily threads which encourages a bit of chatter.... Where's ours?

I'd love to be the change I wish to see in the world, but I have no idea how to automate this any better than an alarm on my phone saying "post a daily thread idiot" and I'm sure there's a better way.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yes, there are a few teething errors but hopefully it will be automated soon. Pinning/unpinning the threads and any other fancy additions might be a fair bit longer, and it is likely to be a bit prone to glitches and failure especially when updates occur.

Once it is running properly I can easily add in automatic posts for other communities, and it can do different types of posts and at different intervals. So I can do that (at request of moderator) or if you know how to use JavaScript to run a program there is code on Git Hub for a Lemmy Bot and Lemmy Frank Bot (which is to make regular posts, using the basic Lemmy Bot code).

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I can investigate this. I've been a dev for many, many years. :)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ok, I've just written a script to call the Lemmy API and (hopefully) post the thread at 12:05am.

I pulled the data I needed regarding properties and URLs from some test REST calls, then implemented a post bot using the official Lemmy HTTP client.

and now we wait....

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Please Please Please tell me what you are doing, I am still having trouble with mine. The tests all worked fine but it won't post past midnight, and so obviously won't work on a recurring basis. Also the part that does the pinning is just crashing the whole thing at the moment and I had to take that section out.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oh... I better add pinning.

I'm using a typescript app. I trigger it with a cronjob that runs a bash script wrapper.

I should be able to put my code up on github this afternoon. :)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Are you able to tell me what app and how you actually run it? Having code is great, but no one seems able/willing to tell me what to actually do with the code. I have been running it in Visual Script on my laptop which works for a while but not for long. I've also been trying to use Vercel to run from their server, but I can only get it to run there in build mode (which is time limited) and not transfer it to an ongoing cron job.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've cleaned up my code and checked it in here: https://github.com/dfrencham/lemmy-post-bot

I use Visual Studio code (I run it using the Linux subsystem for windows).

I've put instructions in the README.md file, and cron setup instructions in the SETUP_CRON.md file.

If you are not setup to build the bot, then I can create a built version and post a .tar.gz file for you to use.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Thank you, that is a lot simpler than the code I was using. Although I have miraculously got mine to work now, so will probably stick with that rather trying to redo it at this point, at least for now. It's been a steep learning curve, but I am starting to somewhat understand what I am looking at with the code now, so that's something!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Great to hear it is working :) always a great feeling.

I've updated my code to output a single .js file which can be called with node. The file is in a zip here: github

If you have a look at the code updates, you might find feature/unfeature code useful. :)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Fabulous, I'll have a look.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I enjoyed this and it was very wholesome. Well done you two.