Auto-Twitter-Bot

This is a bot that will automatically post a (G)I-DLE picture once every 6 hours. @GIDLE_BOT_DAILY

Twitter Developer Account

• Be sure to have a Twitter developer account ready. Here

• We need Consumer Keys (API Keys, Serect) and Authentication Tokens (Access Token and Secret). Keep them in a safe place and not reveal to others.

Dependencies

• Check if you have Node.js and npm installed in your PC node -v and npm -v.

• Download the necessary components

npm init -y
npm install twitter-api-v2
npm install dotenv
npm install cron
npm install fs
npm install request
npm install sharp

• Create a .env file and replace your values you created on the Twitter developer platform. Note that APP_ID is the first few numbers of ACCESS_TOKEN

NODE_ENV="development"
API_KEY = "XXXXXX"
API_SECRET = "YYYYYY"
ACCESS_TOKEN = "12345-ZZZZ"
ACCESS_SECRET = "WWWWWWW"
BEARER_TOKEN = "AAAAAAA"
APP_ID = "12345"

• If you don't want to create a Instagram Bot, you don't have to install the following.

npm install instagram-private-api
npm install request-promise
npm install jimp

• Be sure also include the Instagram API key in .env file.

IG_USERNAME="WWWWWWW"
IG_PASSWORD="ZZZZZZ"

• You have to create a .gitignore file to hide these sensitive values from other people.

Environment

• I don't want to set up the Twitter bot locally, so I build a Linux environment inside a EC2 instance of AWS (free tier, free for the first year).

• I use pm2 to keep my index.js running. By default, pm2 will keep the process running even after disconnecting from the SSH session. You can download it by typing sudo npm install -g pm2 in the terminal.

Limitations and Others

• I still have to manually filter the image and add the image direct link to a JSON file.

• I used the free Twitter API v2, so I don't have the access of retweet a post, like a post, search a post etc.

• I used igmur as my storage to keep all my images online.

• I directly used one Github repository to store my images.

• I was also trying to implement a Instagram Bot that will do the same thing. However, I could only do it locally, not on the remote server :( There were some errors using the sharp module in ubuntu.

  • The Instagram API I'm using can't handle png images. This is the reason I used sharp. You surely can find a better solution. Tell me if you find one🌚

• I installed jimp instead, and it worked!

• Due to the small capacity of the remote server, I cannot a build system like Docker to ensure consistency between environments.

• I used the postRecord.txt file to keep track of the images that have been tweeted. I created a bash script that make my life easier. Don't forget to make it executable, chmod u+x twitter.sh.

ubuntu@ip-172-31-83-179:~$ cat twitter.sh 
#!/bin/sh

cat Auto-Twitter-Bot/postRecord.txt >> postRecord.txt
cd Auto-Twitter-Bot
pm2 stop 0
git pull
pm2 start index.js

License and Credits

MIT License. Inspired by the Twitter Bot tutorial from Ryan Carmody