README
twtxt
|gitter| |license|
**twtxt** is a decentralised, minimalist microblogging service for hackers.
So you want to get some thoughts out on the internet in a convenient and slick way while also following the gibberish of others? Instead of signing up at a closed and/or regulated microblogging platform, getting your status updates out with twtxt is as easy as putting them in a publicly accessible text file. The URL pointing to this file is your identity, your account. twtxt then tracks these text files, like a feedreader, and builds your unique timeline out of them, depending on which files you track. The format is simple, human readable, and integrates well with UNIX command line utilities.
|demo|
**tl;dr**: twtxt is a CLI tool, as well as a format specification for self-hosted flat file based microblogging.
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Features
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- A beautiful command-line interface thanks to click.
- Asynchronous HTTP requests
- Integrates well with existing tools (scp, cut, echo, date, etc.) and your shell.
- Don’t like the official client? Tweet using ``echo -e "`date -Im`\tHello world!" >> twtxt.txt``!
Installation
------------
Release version:
================
1) Make sure that you have the latest npm and node
2) Install this package using npm:
.. code::
$ npm install -g twtxt
3) Run ``twtxt quickstart``. :)
Usage
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twtxt features an excellent command-line interface thanks to `click <http://click.pocoo.org/>`_. Don’t hesitate to append ``--help`` or call commands without arguments to get information about all available commands, options and arguments.
Here are a few of the most common operations you may encounter when using twtxt:
Follow a source:
================
.. code::
$ twtxt follow bob http://bobsplace.xyz/twtxt
✓ You’re now following bob.
List all sources you’re following:
==================================
.. code::
$ twtxt following
➤ alice @ https://example.org/alice.txt
➤ bob @ http://bobsplace.xyz/twtxt
Unfollow a source:
==================
.. code::
$ twtxt unfollow bob
✓ You’ve unfollowed bob.
Post a status update:
=====================
.. code::
$ twtxt tweet "Hello, this is twtxt!"
View your timeline:
===================
.. code::
$ twtxt timeline
➤ bob (5 minutes ago):
This is my first "tweet". :)
➤ alice (2 hours ago):
I wonder if this is a thing?
Configuration
-------------
twtxt uses a simple INI-like configuration file. It’s recommended to use ``twtxt quickstart`` to create it. On Linux twtxt checks ``~/.config/twtxt/config`` for it’s configuration. Consult `get_app_dir <http://click.pocoo.org/6/api/#click.get_app_dir>`_ to find out the config directory for other operating systems.
Note: The npm version uses json instead of an ini.
Here’s an example ``conf`` file, showing every currently supported option:
.. code::
{
"user": "melvincarvalho",
"twtfile": "/home/user/twtxt.txt",
"limit_timeline": "20",
"following": [
{
"user": "twtxt",
"uri": "https://buckket.org/twtxt_news.txt"
}
]
}
[twtxt] section:
================
+-------------------+-------+------------+---------------------------------------------------+
| Option: | Type: | Default: | Help: |
+===================+=======+============+===================================================+
| nick | TEXT | | your nick, will be displayed in your timeline |
+-------------------+-------+------------+---------------------------------------------------+
| twtfile | PATH | | path to your local twtxt file |
+-------------------+-------+------------+---------------------------------------------------+
| limit_timeline | INT | 20 | limit amount of tweets shown in your timeline |
+-------------------+-------+------------+---------------------------------------------------+
| post_tweet_hook | TEXT | | command to be executed after tweeting |
+-------------------+-------+------------+---------------------------------------------------+
``post_tweet_hook`` is very useful if you want to push your twtxt file to a remote (web) server. Check the example above tho see how it’s used with ``scp``.
[followings] section:
=====================
This section holds all your followings as nick, URL pairs. You can edit this section manually or use the ``follow``/``unfollow`` commands of twtxt for greater comfort.
Format specification
--------------------
The central component of sharing information, i.e. status updates, with twtxt is a simple text file containing all the status updates of a single user. One status per line, each of which is equipped with an ISO 8601 date/time string followed by a TAB character (\\t) to separate it from the actual text. A specific ordering of the statuses is not mandatory.
The file must be encoded with UTF-8 and must use LF (\\n) as line separators.
A status should consist of up to 140 characters, longer status updates are technically possible but discouraged. twtxt will warn the user if a newly composed status update exceeds this limit, and it will also shorten incoming status updates by default. Also note that a status may not contain any control characters.
Take a look at this example file:
.. code::
2016-02-04T13:30+01 You can really go crazy here! ┐(ﾟ∀ﾟ)┌
2016-02-01T11:00+01 This is just another example.
2015-12-12T12:00+01 Fiat lux!
Contributions
-------------
- A web-based directory of twtxt users by `reednj <https://twitter.com/reednj>`_: http://twtxt.reednj.com/
- A web-based directory of twtxt users by `xena <https://git.xeserv.us/xena>`_: https://twtxtlist.cf
- A web-based twtxt feed hoster for the masses by `plomlompom <http://www.plomlompom.de/>`_: https://github.com/plomlompom/htwtxt
- A twitter-to-twtxt converter in node.js by `DracoBlue <https://github.com/DracoBlue>`_: https://gist.github.com/DracoBlue/488466eaabbb674c636f
License
-------
twtxt is released under the MIT License. See the bundled LICENSE file for details.
.. |gitter| image:: https://img.shields.io/gitter/room/buckket/twtxt.svg?style=flat
:target: https://gitter.im/buckket/twtxt
:alt: Chat on gitter
.. |license| image:: https://img.shields.io/badge/license-MIT-blue.svg?style=flat
:target: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/buckket/twtxt/master/LICENSE
:alt: Package license
.. |demo| image:: https://asciinema.org/a/1w2q3suhgrzh2hgltddvk9ot4.png
:target: https://asciinema.org/a/1w2q3suhgrzh2hgltddvk9ot4
:alt: Demo