刺猬口袋
slug
how-to-create-a-mastodon-bot-with-Python
date
Oct 27, 2023
status
Published
tags
Toy
summary
“Or how to create a Mastodon bot with Python”
type
Post
A Guide to Creating a Mastodon Bot with Python
1. Travel to Bot-Verse
Create a new account for your bot on any Mastodon instance or consider using Bot-Verse, a specialized instance for robot accounts.
Regardless of where your bot resides, be sure to read the basic rules to determine whether you should keep your posts unlisted to avoid cluttering the public timeline.
2. Introduce Your Bot to the Fediverse
Customize your bot's account, including its name, avatar, banner, and description.
If necessary, add a copyright disclaimer.
3. Control your bot
Create an application in the settings page. Simply set an application name and keep other settings as default to obtain the necessary permissions.
Now, you get your client ID, client secret and access token.
4. Instruct Your Bot with Python
- Install Mastodon.py library.
- Write Python code to instruct your bot.
- Implement code to automate your bot by using a timer or random loop to schedule toots.
- Run your script in the background.
If you can't access the Mastodon API in mainland China, you may need a proxy.
5. Find Image Sources
If your bot is designed to post images, you need to locate high-quality image sources.
There are two ways to obtain images when your bot toot:
- Use official APIs to get images from photo-sharing platform such as flickr, call the API to fetch the images in real-time.
- Build your own image dataset and store them locally.
- Use Search Engines: Utilize search engines like Google Images, Bing Images, and others with your keyword.
- APIs: Some websites and services provide APIs that allow you to programmatically access image data, such as Unsplash, Pixabay and Pexels.
- Image Databases: Some image databases and platforms offer keyword search and bulk image downloads. You may find your target in some machine learning community such as Kaggle.
- Custom Scrapers: If there are no existing tools or APIs that meet your needs, you can write custom web scrapers.
You can also use Chrome extensions like this one to download web images.