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.

    • Zagorath
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      1 year ago

      This tag should work: @[email protected]

      I’ve written some bots for Reddit in the past, so I’d be happy to help with such a bot for the aussie.zone instance, or at least for !brisbane. Doesn’t look like there are any good wrappers for the Lemmy API yet (unless you count one for Rust which requires you to sign up for an email mailing list to contribute or submit feedback, which…gross) so the work involved at the moment might be a bit more than it was using PRAW.

    • Rusty Raven
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      1 year ago

      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).

      • deadcatM
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        1 year ago

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

      • deadcatM
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        1 year ago

        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…

        • Rusty Raven
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          1 year ago

          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.

          • deadcatM
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            1 year ago

            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. :)

            • Rusty Raven
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              1 year ago

              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.

              • deadcatM
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                1 year ago

                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.

                • Rusty Raven
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                  1 year ago

                  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!

                  • calhoon2005
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                    1 year ago

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

                  • deadcatM
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                    1 year ago

                    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. :)