I'm not going to post a topic or comment every time I update this silly thing, but this was a pretty big change that I felt necessitated a new topic.

Link to the script

Tildes Automated Posting Script, or TAPS, is a Python script that posts topics to Tildes. Using the script's configuration file, you can define which account you want the topic to be posted under, the group the topic should be posted to, the link for that topic (if any), the comment or text for that topic (if any), as well as what tags the topic should have (if any, but highly encouraged).

It also now works with accounts that use two-factor authentication.

I wrote this because every Monday and Friday I post topics to ~talk at 11:00 AM. However, I'm a forgetful person, sometimes wake up late, and will be starting classes soon, so I thought it would be nice to have a script that I can schedule, using something like cron, to post those topics for me.

The documentation should explain everything that can be done with the script, but anyone with questions or issues can message me for help.

With these recent changes, the script no longer requires a web browser or Selenium. It should be able to run on pretty much anything. I'll be using the script on a Raspberry Pi Zero W to post my recurring topics.

I wanted to have this update posted Sunday night, but at the last minute I decided to use @deing's tildee.py library, which made things a lot easier. I finsihed rewriting the script's code last night and updated the documentation today.

https://gitlab.com/hungariantoast/taps

So yeah, this took a bit longer to get out than it should have, but that's because my summer classes are eating up all my free time.

Tildes Automated Posting Script, or TAPS, is a Python script that, when properly configured, will post a topic to Tildes under the account credentials, to the group, with the title, comment, link, and tags that you set. I created it because every Monday and Friday around 11:00 AM I post a topic to ~talk, but that can be a problem for someone who is forgetful like me, so I wrote a program that posts the topic for me, and now I can just run it on a schedule with something like cron.

The documentation should explain enough for you to get started with it, but I should have time tonight to answer questions and discuss feedback or suggestions.

Some features I might add in the future:

• [Done] An argument that posts all the topics defined in config.py instead of having to name them individually
• Check that topics defined in config.py have all the necessary values and fail if they don't
• Check that the username and password variables are set, fail if they aren't
• Check that the link, title, or tags of a topic will be accepted by Tildes and fail if not
• Add an "interactive mode" where the program just prompts the user to answer a couple of questions then posts a topic using the provided answers
• Add the ability to post comments to topics (maybe)
• Add a config option that waits a certain amount of time between posting topics to avoid the rate limit

Some quick thoughts about this approach to automating interactions with Tildes:

• I'd much rather drive a text based browser, but I haven't found anything (yet) with Python bindings

• I'd much rather just send HTTP requests, but I don't know how to do that (yet)

• I'd much rather Tildes just have an API, but I don't know how to build one (yet)