cdzombak/mastodon-post repository overview

⁠mastodon-post

The simplest possible CLI tool for posting to Mastodon, ideally suited for use in simple bots.

⁠Usage

mastodon-post [OPTIONS] -text "text to post"

⁠Options

• -text: Text to post. Required.
• -visibility: Visibility of the post. One of public, unlisted, or private. Defaults to public.
• -help: Print help and exit.
• -version: Print version and exit.

⁠Credentials and Server Configuration

Credentials and the server's address are provided via the environment variables MASTODON_SERVER, MASTODON_CLIENT_ID, MASTODON_CLIENT_SECRET, and MASTODON_ACCESS_TOKEN.

MASTODON_SERVER is the URL of your Mastodon server (for example, https://mastodon.social).

To get a Client ID/Secret and Access Token:

1. Navigate to your Mastodon Preferences
2. Select "Developer" in the Sidebar
3. Click "New Application" at the top of the page
4. Enter a name for your application (for example, "mastodon-post")
5. Use urn:ietf:wg:oauth:2.0:oob for the Redirect URI
6. Deselect all scopes, then select only write:statuses
7. Click "Submit"
8. The following page will show your Client ID, Client Secret, and Access Token

You can optionally provide these environment variables by placing a .env file in the working directory from which you run mastodon-post. The program will read the file if it exists and set the environment variables automatically.

If running the program via Docker, you can pass the same file to the --env-file option.

An empty .env file is included in this repository to help you get started: .env.template⁠.

⁠Installation

⁠macOS via Homebrew

brew install cdzombak/oss/mastodon-post

⁠Debian via apt repository

Install my Debian repository if you haven't already:

sudo apt-get install ca-certificates curl gnupg
sudo install -m 0755 -d /etc/apt/keyrings
curl -fsSL https://dist.cdzombak.net/deb.key | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/dist-cdzombak-net.gpg
sudo chmod 0644 /etc/apt/keyrings/dist-cdzombak-net.gpg
echo -e "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/dist-cdzombak-net.gpg] https://dist.cdzombak.net/deb/oss any oss\n" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/dist-cdzombak-net.list > /dev/null
sudo apt-get update

Then install mastodon-post via apt-get:

sudo apt-get install mastodon-post

⁠Manual installation from build artifacts

Pre-built binaries for Linux and macOS on various architectures are downloadable from each GitHub Release⁠. Debian packages for each release are available as well.

⁠Build and install locally

git clone https://github.com/cdzombak/mastodon-post.git
cd mastodon-post
make build

cp out/mastodon-post $INSTALL_DIR

⁠Docker images

Docker images are available for a variety of Linux architectures from Docker Hub⁠ and GHCR⁠. Images are based on the scratch image and are as small as possible.

Run them via, for example:

docker run --rm --env-file /path/to/.env cdzombak/mastodon-post:1 -text "message to post"
docker run --rm --env-file /path/to/.env ghcr.io/cdzombak/mastodon-post:1 -text "message to post"

⁠Example Usage

See:

• sirens_tweetbot⁠

⁠About

• Issues: github.com/cdzombak/mastodon-post/issues⁠
• Author: Chris Dzombak⁠
  • GitHub: @cdzombak⁠

⁠License

MIT; see LICENSE in this repository.