# 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](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.