microblog.py

Simple and stylish text-to-html microblog generator.

Requirements

The following python modules are used within the repository.

toml tomlkit python_dateutil pycurl

• tomlkit (optional), for maintaining the configuration file between updates (check-settings.py).

Some Gnu core utilities are expected to be present but can be substituted for other means.

• make (optional), to invoke the script using Makefiles
• date (optional), to generate timestamps when writing posts

Usage

The following generates a sample page result.html.

cp example/Makefile .
make

Using make is uptional; it does the following within a new directory:

cp example/settings.toml ./settings.toml
cp example/timeline.css ./timeline.css
cp example/default.tpl ./template.tpl
cp example/demo.txt ./content.txt
python src/microblog.py ./template.tpl ./content.txt > result.html

This script generate a text file after operation.

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

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

Configuration

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

Configuration options as understood by the script are tentative and may change in the future.

A key may be missing from your settings file (KeyError)

I'm getting KeyError when I run the program

This script is throwing KeyError after I ran git pull

In most cases, this means I added new configuration options. You can resolve this error by adding missing keys from example/settings.toml to settings.toml.

The following command can check for missing keys and update if needed.

python src/check-settings.py

Missing keys if any are initialized to default values from example/settings.toml.

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 suggestions.