Avoid stress: Automatically archive older unread Instapaper bookmarks
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Auto-archiving for older unread bookmarks in Instapaper, inspired by Pocket Casts’ configurable auto-archive feature.
This tool aims to reduce stress induced by a long Instapaper reading backlog, by automatically archiving older unread bookmarks for you.
This is the Instapaper equivalent of my Feedbin Auto-Archiver. Please see its Motivation discussion for more details.
To run with Docker: a working Docker installation is required.
To run with a local Python installation: Python 3.6 is required. The newest available version of pyinstapaper, on which this script depends, requires a specific libxml version that does not build on newer Python versions. Additionally, pyinstapaper has a bug that prevents it from working with Python 3.5 or older.
Due to these compatibility issues, I recommend using this script under Docker; the provided Dockerfile builds a working image based on python3.6-alpine.
Pre-built Docker images are available. See Docker Hub for details.
No installation is required to use these images under Docker.
feedbin-auto-archiver directorymake virtualenv to create a virtualenv for the project & install dependenciesYour Instapaper API token and secret are supplied via the environment variables INSTAPAPER_API_ID and INSTAPAPER_API_SECRET. Get these here.
Credentials are supplied via the environment variables INSTAPAPER_LOGIN and INSTAPAPER_PASSWORD.
Docker Configuration
Credentials may be placed in a .env file and given to the docker run command like:
docker run --rm --env-file .env cdzombak/instapaper-auto-archiver:1 [OPTIONS]
(See .env.sample for a sample file.)
Alternatively, credentials may be passed directly to the docker run command like:
docker run --rm \
-e INSTAPAPER_API_ID=my_instapaper_api_key \
-e INSTAPAPER_API_SECRET=my_instapaper_api_secret \
-e INSTAPAPER_LOGIN=me@example.com \
-e INSTAPAPER_PASSWORD=p@ssw0rd \
cdzombak/instapaper-auto-archiver:1 [OPTIONS]
Local Python Configuration
Your credentials can be stored in a .env file alongside the instapaper_archiver.py script. The script will automatically read environment variables from that file. (See .env.sample for an example.)
The rules file is a JSON file specifying per-domain maximum unread bookmark ages. The file is allowed to contain comments, allowing for clarity & easier maintenance. See rules.sample.json for an example.
The file must contain an object with two top-level keys: max_age and domain_specific.
max_age is equivalent to the --max-age argument; any bookmarks older than that age will be marked as read, unless they’re from a domain for which you’ve created a custom rule.
domain_specific is a list of objects, each of which have two keys, like this:
"domain_specific": [
{
"domain": "nytimes.com",
"max_age": 30
}, // …
]
Those domain-specific rules take precedence over max_age. This allows you to set a quicker expiration for certain sites, or set a longer expiration for sites that tend to have evergreen articles you really don’t want to miss.
To avoid the archiver marking anything as read for a given domain, specify 999999999 for the domain’s max_age. (That is roughly 2.7 million years.)
This is the maximum number of days a Python timedelta object can represent.
Invoke the script with docker run. To use a rules file, you will need to mount it into the container.
docker run --rm --env-file .env \
-v /path/to/my_rules.json:/rules.json \
cdzombak/instapaper-auto-archiver:1 \
--rules-file /rules.json [--dry-run false] [OPTIONS]
. venv/bin/activatepython instapaper_archiver.py --rules-file /path/to/my_rules.json [--dry-run false] [OPTIONS]Alternatively, invoke the virtualenv's Python interpreter directly:
venv/bin/python3.6 instapaper_archiver.py --rules-file /path/to/my_rules.json [--dry-run false] [OPTIONS]
All flags are optional (though if you omit --dry-run, no changes will ever be made in your Instapaper account).
--dry-run
Boolean. Default: True.
Dry-run specifies whether the script should actually change anything in your Instapaper account. By default, this is true, meaning no changes will be made.
Once you’re confident in your configuration, activate the script with --dry-fun false.
--entries-limit
Integer. Default: 250. Max: 500.
Max number of bookmarks to try to fetch via the Instapaper API. Instapaper limits this to a maximum of 500; a smaller number should suffice.
--max-age
Integer. Default: 90.
The maximum age for unread bookmarks. Bookmarks older than this will be marked as read.
This argument is ignored when using a rules file (see --rules-file below).
--only-domain
String. Default: none.
Only archive bookmarks from the given domain. This is useful for eg. debugging or one-off archviing tasks.
--rules-file
String (path/filename). Default: none.
The path to a JSON file describing your per-domain rules. See “Configuration” below for details.
If a rules file is specified, the --max-age flag has no effect.
Run python instapaper_archiver.py list-domains to print a list domains from which you currently have unread bookmarks, for use in writing per-domain rules.
The output is grep-able. For example, to find the NY Times website, try python instapaper_archiver.py list-domains | grep -i "nytimes"
(For Docker, run docker run --rm --env-file .env cdzombak/instapaper-auto-archiver:1 list-domains.)
This is how I’m running this tool on my personal server:
# Instapaper Archiver
# Runs daily at 1:30am
30 1 * * * docker run --rm --env-file $HOME/.config/instapaper/env cdzombak/instapaper-auto-archiver:1 --max-age 180 --entries-limit 100 --dry-run false
Chris Dzombak, dzombak.com
docker pull cdzombak/instapaper-auto-archiver