Nova Prime, Now Also An Archive

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I’ve been doing a lot in order to get my website to act as a more central place where all of my thoughts and posts are stored. One of the issues I was having, is that it’s really cumbersome to have to generate a post, then make that post, then commit, and sync to NeoCities … just to put up one Post, Note, or Log. To me, this is useful, and really cool, but it also doesn’t feel like posting on social media. So what do you do?

Well, of course, you setup reverse publishing/syndication, and backup every single thing you post to Mastodon in converted markdown files formatted for Jekyll, that are then fed into a Liquid feed!

How?

By using this repository.

Basically, you go through the process of getting this thing setup, and make sure you specify that you want to use a Jekyll template (you’ve got to set that up yourself), and point it at a directory on your website, so that you can effectively setup a cronjob that just backs up all of your posts, daily.

Here’s my bash script for backing up my Mastodon posts to a directory on my local machine, where my website is stored:

graboots.sh

#!/bin/bash

export MASTODON_ACCESS_TOKEN=your_access_token_here

PREVIOUS_SINCE_ID=""

# Function to delete posts containing the specified phrase
delete_posts_with_phrase() {
  local phrase="$1"
  local directory="$2"
  for post_file in "$directory"/*.md; do
    if grep -q "$phrase" "$post_file"; then
      echo "Excluding post: $post_file"
      rm "$post_file"
    fi
  done
}

while true; do
  SINCE_ID=$(test -f /home/cmdr-nova/Documents/Website/cmdr-nova.github.io/_toots/first && cat /home/cmdr-nova/Documents/Website/cmdr-nova.github.io/_toots/first || echo '')
  
  if [[ "$SINCE_ID" == "$PREVIOUS_SINCE_ID" ]]; then
    echo "No new posts. Exiting"
    break
  fi

  command="/home/cmdr-nova/.local/go/bin/mastodon-markdown-archive --dist=/home/cmdr-nova/Documents/Website/cmdr-nova.github.io/_toots \
    --exclude-replies=true \
    --exclude-reblogs=true \
    --user=https://mastodon.online/@cmdr_nova \
    --porcelain=true \
    --visibility=public \
    --download-media=bundle \
    --threaded=true \
    --persist-first=/home/cmdr-nova/Documents/Website/cmdr-nova.github.io/_toots/first \
    --since-id=$SINCE_ID \
    --template=/home/cmdr-nova/jekyll.tmpl \
    --filename={{.Post.Id}}.md"
  
  output=$($command)

  if [[ "$output" -eq 0 ]]; then
    echo "No new posts. Exiting"
    break
  fi
  echo "Fetched $output posts. Continuing."
  
  # Delete posts containing the phrase "Posted via Nova Prime:"
  delete_posts_with_phrase "Posted via Nova Prime:" "/home/cmdr-nova/Documents/Website/cmdr-nova.github.io/_toots"
  
  PREVIOUS_SINCE_ID=$SINCE_ID
  sleep 1
done

But then, this isn’t everything you need to do in order to make this work, right? So, you probably also want each of these posts on your site to link back to their original location (for as long as they exist), and to also use the images include in posts that are backed up, that have images, right?

Okay, so run this script every single time you build your Jekyll site:

syndicate_toots.py

import os
import glob
import shutil

# Directory containing your toots
toots_dir = '/home/cmdr-nova/Documents/Website/cmdr-nova.github.io/_toots'

# Function to update the front matter and content of a toot
def update_toot_file(toot_file, post_id, image_path=None):
    # Construct the Mastodon syndication
    mastodon_link = f'https://mastodon.online/@cmdr_nova/{post_id}'

    # Read the content of the toot
    with open(toot_file, 'r') as file:
        content = file.readlines()

    # Check if the mastodon link is already present
    if not any(line.startswith('mastodon:') for line in content):
        # Insert the mastodon link into the front matter
        for i, line in enumerate(content):
            if line.strip() == '---' and i != 0:
                content.insert(i, f'mastodon: {mastodon_link}\n')
                break

    # Check if the image path is provided and not already present
    if image_path and not any(line.startswith('image:') for line in content):
        # Insert the image path into the front matter
        for i, line in enumerate(content):
            if line.strip() == '---' and i != 0:
                content.insert(i, f'image: {image_path}\n')
                break

    # Insert the image tag at the end of the content if not already present
    if image_path and not any(f'<img src="{image_path}"' in line for line in content):
        content.append(f'\n<img src="{image_path}" alt="Image">\n')

    # Write the updated content back to the toot
    with open(toot_file, 'w') as file:
        file.writelines(content)

# Process individual markdown files in the toots directory
for toot_file in glob.glob(os.path.join(toots_dir, '*.md')):
    # Extract the post ID from the filename
    post_id = os.path.basename(toot_file).replace('.md', '')
    update_toot_file(toot_file, post_id)

# Process folders containing an index.md file in the toots directory
for toot_folder in glob.glob(os.path.join(toots_dir, '*/')):
    index_file = os.path.join(toot_folder, 'index.md')
    if os.path.exists(index_file):
        # Extract the post ID from the folder name
        post_id = os.path.basename(os.path.dirname(index_file))
        # Find the image file in the folder (assuming only one image per folder)
        image_files = glob.glob(os.path.join(toot_folder, '*.*'))
        image_path = None
        for image_file in image_files:
            if image_file != index_file:
                # Construct the relative image path
                image_path = f'/toots/{post_id}/{os.path.basename(image_file)}'
                break
        update_toot_file(index_file, post_id, image_path)

print("Toots updated successfully.")

Now, obviously, this is going to take a bit more setup than just putting both of these scripts together. You probably keep your files in different places than I do, and you might not even want a Jekyll template. Furthermore, you also still need to construct your site in order to be able to include these markdown files within the Liquid feed that’s already included on a Jekyll website.

But, other than that, there we go!

Everything I post on Mastodon, will now post to my website (as long as I remember to commit and sync daily), using this cronjob:

0 2 * * * /home/cmdr-nova/grabtoots.sh

This is, essentially, my answer as to how to make it so that I can post to my website from my phone, albeit, a little bit of an extreme work-around, but very simple once you’ve got it all up and running.