microblog.py

microblog.py

Simple and stylish text-to-html microblog generator.

Requirements

python3 make dateutil toml curl pycurl urllib

• dateutil, toml are Python modules.
• make (optional), method for invoking the script.
• curl, pycurl and urllib (optional), for uploading multiple files to neocities (neouploader.py).

Usage

Send three arguments minimum to python. The fourth argument for an e-mail address is optional.

python microblog.py ./template.html ./content.txt

The resulting web page is outputted from standard output. Therefore:

python microblog.py ./template.html ./content.txt >  result.html

Use a Makefile (or another script) to simplify invocation.

cp example/Makefile .

This script generate a text file after operation.

• updatedfiles.txt, a list of files updated by the script for use in automated uploads.

Configuration

Settings are read from settings.toml. See example/settings.toml.

Writing Content

See example/demo.txt.

The content file is a plain text file of posts. Each post has two types of information: timestamp and message. For example:

Thu Mar 17 11:11:11 PM EDT 2022
Today I ate ice cream.
It was strawberry flavored. 
#TouchingGrass

Thu Mar 16 2:22:22 PM EDT 2022
I took these pictures.
./images/1.jpg ./images/2.jpg ./images/3.jpg

• the first line of the file must be empty (newline character only).
• the two last lines of the file must be empty
• html can be placed in the message for embedded videos and rich text

Anything else

This is a script I wrote for personal use. The output can be seen on https://likho.neocities.org/microblog/index.html. I figure someone else may want to use it for their own personal websites, so it is published.

It works for me and my workflow; therefore, it is simple and involves little lines of code. But I am still open to comments, questions, or suggetions.