"This Mastodon bot example is part of the module *Bots as Infrapuncture*. :-)"
"This Mastodon bot example is part of the module *Bots as Digital Infrapunctures* done by Cristina Cochior and Manetta Berends in the proximity of [Varia](https://varia.zone/en/). The moduleis produced in the context of the course *Data-driven research and digital tools* at the [Department of Media & Culture, Utrecht University](https://www.uu.nl/en/organisation/department-of-media-and-culture-studies) in collaboration with [Dr. Karin van Es](https://www.karinvanes.net) and [Creative Coding Utrecht](https://creativecodingutrecht.nl/)."
]
},
{
"cell_type": "markdown",
"metadata": {},
"source": [
"(explain a bit how Jupyter notebooks work)"
"We now find ourselves in a Jupyter Notebook — an open-source web application that allows you to create and share documents that contain live code, equations, visualizations and narrative text. This notebook gives us the possibility to write comments alongside the code, and to write run code without installing the dependencies on our own computers.\n",
"\n",
"We're going to be using the [Python](https://www.python.org/) programming language for this example.\n",
"\n",
"In order to *run* (execute) a block of code, click the ▶️ symbol from the toolbox on the top right corner.\n",
"\n",
"You can change the code blocks by double clicking the block and you can run them in order to see the effects.\n",
"\n",
"The bot we will be tooting on the Mastodon instance [botsin.space](https://botsin.space/about), a space dedicated fully to bot users. \n",
"You can find the @infrapunctures bot [here](https://botsin.space/@infrapunctures)."
]
},
{
@ -32,16 +41,40 @@
"cell_type": "markdown",
"metadata": {},
"source": [
"We're using a Python library that is written for Mastodon.\n",
"We started by importing a Python code library that is written for Mastodon. You can find more information about it on its [code respository](https://github.com/halcy/Mastodon.py). The first two lines were already executed, we we have commented them out for now.\n",
"\n",
"https://github.com/halcy/Mastodon.py"
"Some of the lines you will see below have a \"#\" in front of them, this turns them into comments instead of executable lines, so they will not run. These only need to be run once, which was done in preparation for this bot."
"Requirement already satisfied: python-dateutil in /home/ccl/Documents/bots-as-digital-infrapunctures/bots-venv/lib/python3.7/site-packages (from Mastodon.py) (2.8.1)\n",
"Requirement already satisfied: six in /home/ccl/Documents/bots-as-digital-infrapunctures/bots-venv/lib/python3.7/site-packages (from Mastodon.py) (1.15.0)\n",
"Requirement already satisfied: chardet<4,>=3.0.2 in /home/ccl/Documents/bots-as-digital-infrapunctures/bots-venv/lib/python3.7/site-packages (from requests>=2.4.2->Mastodon.py) (3.0.4)\n",
"Requirement already satisfied: certifi>=2017.4.17 in /home/ccl/Documents/bots-as-digital-infrapunctures/bots-venv/lib/python3.7/site-packages (from requests>=2.4.2->Mastodon.py) (2020.6.20)\n",
"Requirement already satisfied: idna<3,>=2.5 in /home/ccl/Documents/bots-as-digital-infrapunctures/bots-venv/lib/python3.7/site-packages (from requests>=2.4.2->Mastodon.py) (2.10)\n",
"Requirement already satisfied: urllib3!=1.25.0,!=1.25.1,<1.26,>=1.21.1 in /home/ccl/Documents/bots-as-digital-infrapunctures/bots-venv/lib/python3.7/site-packages (from requests>=2.4.2->Mastodon.py) (1.25.10)\n",
"With the code below we are choosing which Mastodon instance we want to use."
]
},
{
"cell_type": "code",
"execution_count": 15,
@ -76,14 +116,33 @@
"cell_type": "markdown",
"metadata": {},
"source": [
"## Starting the bot...."
"## Starting the bot"
]
},
{
"cell_type": "markdown",
"metadata": {},
"source": [
"We have saved the user credentials in a file called 'mastodon-bot-usercred.secret' which contains a token code for indentifying our bot and the name of the instance. In the code below we access this secret file in order to get authorisation to post on the bot's behalf."
"\u001b[0;31mNameError\u001b[0m: name 'mastodon' is not defined"
]
}
],
"source": [
"# Another one, automized over a longer period of time\n",
"\n",
"from time import sleep\n",
"\n",
"toots = [\n",
@ -134,6 +217,13 @@
" sleep(300) # 300 seconds = 5 minutes"
]
},
{
"cell_type": "markdown",
"metadata": {},
"source": [
"Here we are tooting a media file (audio, video, image) using their urls. You can read more about it [here](https://mastodonpy.readthedocs.io/en/stable/#media-dicts)."
"\u001b[0;31mNameError\u001b[0m: name 'mastodon' is not defined"
]
}
],
"source": [
"# Generate sentences ? \n",
"\n",
"import random\n",
"\n",
"names = ['', '', '']\n",
"objects = ['', '', '']\n",
"actions = ['', '', '']\n",
"names = ['Rosa', 'Luxembourg', 'Parks']\n",
"objects = ['orange', 'mango', 'lychee']\n",
"actions = ['eats', 'draws', 'picks up']\n",
"\n",
"n = random.choice(names)\n",
"o = random.choice(objects)\n",
@ -201,6 +305,13 @@
"mastodon.toot(toot)\n"
]
},
{
"cell_type": "markdown",
"metadata": {},
"source": [
"The code bellow will make your bot toot if ..."
]
},
{
"cell_type": "code",
"execution_count": 14,
@ -229,6 +340,17 @@
"## Make your own bot"
]
},
{
"cell_type": "markdown",
"metadata": {},
"source": [
"These have been only a few things you can try out that are meant to illustrate some of the programming logic we mentioned in the module. You can always make your own bot and complexify the code.\n",
"\n",
"If you would like to make your own bot from scratch, you can remove the '#' from every line below and save it as a new file. \n",
"\n",
"(We didn't include this section in the code bot above because it was already executed in the preparation and only needs to be done once.)"
