How to install Feed2tweet¶

$ wget https://bootstrap.pypa.io/ez_setup.py -O - | python3.4 - --user

Configure Feed2tweet¶

As a prerequisite to use Feed2tweet, you need a Twitter app. Log in Twitter, go to https://apps.twitter.com, create an app and generate the access token.

In order to configure Feed2tweet, you need to create a feed2tweet.ini file (or any name you prefer, finishing with the extension .ini) with the following parameters:

[twitter]
consumer_key=ml9jaiBnf3pmU9uIrKNIxAr3v
consumer_secret=8Cmljklzerkhfer4hlj3ljl2hfvc123rezrfsdctpokaelzerp
access_token=213416590-jgJnrJG5gz132nzerl5zerwi0ahmnwkfJFN9nr3j
access_token_secret=3janlPMqDKlunJ4Hnr90k2bnfk3jfnwkFjeriFZERj32Z

[cache]
cachefile=/home/user/feed2tweet/cache.db

[rss]
uri: https://www.journalduhacker.net/rss
uri_list: /home/user/feed2tweet/rsslist.txt
tweet: {title} {link}
title_pattern: Open Source
title_pattern_case_sensitive: true

[hashtaglist]
several_words_hashtags_list: /home/user/feed2tweet/hashtags.txt

For the [twitter] section:

• consumer_key: the Twitter consumer key (see your apps.twitter.com webpage)
• consumer_secret: the Twitter consumer secret key (see your apps.twitter.com webpage)
• access_token: the Twitter access token key (see your apps.twitter.com webpage)
• access_token_secret: the Twitter access token secret key (see your apps.twitter.com webpage)

For the [cache] section:

• cachefile: the path to the cache file storing ids of already tweeted links. Absolute path is mandatory. This file should always use the .db extension.

For the [rss] section:

• uri: the url of the rss feed to parse
• uri_list: a path to a file with several adresses of rss feeds, one by line. Absolute path is mandatory
• tweet: format of the tweet you want to post. It should use existing entries of the RSS fields like {title} or {link}. Launch it with this field empty to display all available entries
• {one field of the rss feed}_pattern: takes a string representing a pattern to match for a specified field of each rss entry of the rss feed, like title_pattern or summary_pattern
• {one field of the rss feed}_pattern_case_sensitive: either the pattern matching for the specified field should be case sensitive or not. Default to true if not specified

For the [hashtaglist] section:

• several_words_hashtags_list: a path to the file containing hashtags in two or more words. Absolute path is mandatory. By default Feed2tweet adds a # before every words of a hashtag.

How to display available sections of the rss feed¶

Starting from 0.8, Feed2tweet offers the –rss-sections command line option to display the available section of the rss feed and exits:

$ feed2tweet --rss-sections -c feed2tweet.ini
The following sections are available in this RSS feed: ['title', 'comments', 'authors', 'link', 'author', 'summary', 'links', 'tags', id', 'author_detail', 'published']

Use Feed2tweet¶

After the configuration of Feed2tweet, just launch the following command:

$ feed2tweet -c /path/to/feed2tweet.ini

Run Feed2tweet on a regular basis¶

Feed2tweet should be launche on a regular basis in order to efficiently send your new RSS entries to Twitter. It is quite easy to achieve with adding a line to your user crontab, as described below:

@hourly feed2tweet -c /path/to/feed2tweet.ini

will execute feed2tweet every hour. Or without the syntactic sugar in the global crontab file /etc/crontab:

0 * * * * johndoe feed2tweet -c /path/to/feed2tweet.ini

Test option¶

In order to know what’s going to be sent to Twitter without actually doing it, use the –dry-run option:

$ feed2tweet --dry-run -c /path/to/feed2tweet.ini

Debug option¶

In order to increase the verbosity of what’s Feed2tweet is doing, use the –debug option followed by the level of verbosity see [the the available different levels](https://docs.python.org/3/library/logging.html):

$ feed2tweet --debug -c /path/to/feed2tweet.ini

Populate the cache file without posting tweets¶

Starting from 0.8, Feed2tweet offers the –populate-cache command line option to populate the cache file without posting to Twitter:

$ feed2tweet --populate-cache -c feed2tweet.ini
populating RSS entry https://www.journalduhacker.net/s/65krkk
populating RSS entry https://www.journalduhacker.net/s/co2es0
populating RSS entry https://www.journalduhacker.net/s/la2ihl
populating RSS entry https://www.journalduhacker.net/s/stfwtx
populating RSS entry https://www.journalduhacker.net/s/qq1wte
populating RSS entry https://www.journalduhacker.net/s/y8mzrp
populating RSS entry https://www.journalduhacker.net/s/ozjqv0
populating RSS entry https://www.journalduhacker.net/s/6ev8jz
populating RSS entry https://www.journalduhacker.net/s/gezvnv
populating RSS entry https://www.journalduhacker.net/s/lqswmz

Plugins¶

Starting from 0.9, Feed2tweet now supports plugins. Plugins offer optional features, not supported by default. Optional means you need a dedicated configuration and sometimes a dedicated external dependencies. What you need for each module is specified below.

# pip3 install feed2tweet[influxdb]

# pip3 install feed2tweet[influxdb] --upgrade

[influxdb]
;host=127.0.0.1
;port=8086
user=influxuser
pass=V3ryS3cr3t
database=influxdb
measurement=tweets

License¶

This software comes under the terms of the GPLv3+. It was previously under the MIT license. See the LICENSE file for the complete history of the license and the full text of the past and current licenses.

Authors¶

Carl Chenet <chaica@ohmytux.com>