Testing automated posting. Sorry for any bugs :D
I grabbed scanned copies of the books from the seven seas, which are higher quality than the ones available on gocomics. Since these are being pirated anyways, I figured using that would be a better option. I also ran them through a imagemagik script to try and automatically rearrange the comics so they’re more mobile friendly. I’ve attached an example. Feel free to poke me for the sources and the script if that’s something that interests you.
@m_f@lemm.ee noticed you’re the new mod. Just got a minimum viable bot to continue the daily posting done.
Neat! You should definitely post then, it’s better if I’m not the single-point-of-failure for comics posting. I’ll post my still-somewhat-wip script for posting the Peanuts comic, which uses GoComic and probably has a lot of overlap with C&H.
I run
python post_stuff.py
, which imports other scripts for each comic and runs them.get_lemmy.py
handles caching auth credentials for up to several days (I’m sure it could go longer but I haven’t checked the docs yet). Caching the creds and running it all from a wrapper entry point keeps the number of logins down, which I was getting rate limited on. It doesn’t currently handle accounts with MFA enabled, but it should be pretty resilient to stuff like file upload failing.You can just ignore the image munging bits and probably some other bits, that was for turning the 1x4 Peanuts strip into a 2x2 post here. You might find interesting stuff by poking around on the site, Peanuts has a transcript for each comic in the HTML, though I don’t see that for C&H.
I’ve also been meaning to publish the git repo somewhere, hopefully this will motivate me to get around to doing that.
pyproject.toml
dependencies sectiondependencies = [ "backoff~=2.2", "beautifulsoup4~=4.12", "pythorhead~=0.26", "requests~=2.32", "urllib3>=2.2.3", ]
get_lemmy.py
import json import logging import os from base64 import b64decode from datetime import datetime from pythorhead import Lemmy def load_token(lemmy: Lemmy): token_path = "./tmp/lemmy-token.txt" try: with open(token_path) as f: token = json.load(f) print("Cached token found") iat = json.loads(b64decode(token["token"].split(".")[1]))["iat"] iat = datetime.fromtimestamp(iat) now = datetime.now() if (now - iat).seconds > 3 * 24 * 3600: print("Token has expired, ignoring") raise FileNotFoundError print("Token hasn't expired, using") lemmy._requestor._auth.token = token["token"] lemmy._requestor.logged_in_username = token["logged_in_username"] except FileNotFoundError: print("Cached token not found, logging in") username = os.environ["LEMMY_USERNAME"] password = os.environ["LEMMY_PASSWORD"] if not lemmy.log_in(username, password): raise Exception("Couldn't log in!") with open(token_path, "w") as f: json.dump({"token": lemmy._requestor._auth.token, "logged_in_username": username}, f) def get_authed_lemmy() -> Lemmy: with open(".env") as f: os.environ.update(dict(line.strip().split("=") for line in f.readlines())) logging.getLogger("backoff").addHandler(logging.StreamHandler()) lemmy = Lemmy(os.environ["LEMMY_DOMAIN"]) load_token(lemmy) return lemmy
post_peanuts.py
import json import subprocess from dataclasses import dataclass from datetime import date, datetime from html import unescape from pathlib import Path from tempfile import TemporaryFile import backoff import requests from bs4 import BeautifulSoup from pythorhead import Lemmy from pythorhead.types import LanguageType, SortType from get_lemmy import get_authed_lemmy @dataclass class Strip: local_path: str transcript: str image_url: str | None = None def munge_image(input_image_file) -> bytes: crop_command = ["magick", "-", "-crop", "25%x100%", "+repage", "+adjoin", "miff:-"] montage_command = ["montage", "-", "-tile", "2x2", "-geometry", "+0+0", "miff:-"] final_command = [ "magick", "-", "-resize", "200%", "-colors", "256", "-depth", "8", "-filter", "Box", "-sharpen", "0x2.0", "png:-", ] with subprocess.Popen( crop_command, stdin=input_image_file, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, ) as crop_result: with subprocess.Popen( montage_command, stdin=crop_result.stdout, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, ) as montage_result: final_bytes = subprocess.run( final_command, stdin=montage_result.stdout, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, check=True, ) return final_bytes.stdout def ensure_downloaded(date: date) -> Strip | None: isodate = date.isoformat() formatted_date = date.strftime("%Y/%m/%d") local_path = Path("./tmp/") / f"peanuts-{isodate}.png" if local_path.exists(): strip = json.loads(local_path.with_suffix(".json").read_text()) transcript = strip["transcript"] print(f"Found existing file, using {local_path}") return Strip(local_path=str(local_path), transcript=transcript) base_url = "https://www.gocomics.com/peanuts/" url = f"{base_url}{formatted_date}" response = requests.get(url) response.raise_for_status() soup = BeautifulSoup(response.text, "html.parser") picture_element = soup.find("picture", class_="item-comic-image") if picture_element is None: if date.today().weekday() == 1: print("No comic, expected since it's Tuesday") return else: raise Exception("It's not Tuesday and found no comic!") image_url = picture_element.find("img").get("src") print(f"Image URL found: {image_url}") with TemporaryFile("wb") as f: response = requests.get(image_url) response.raise_for_status() f.write(response.content) f.seek(0) munged_bytes = munge_image(f) with open(local_path, "wb") as rf: rf.write(munged_bytes) print(f"Comic saved as: {local_path}") description = soup.find("meta", property="og:description") transcript = "\n>\n".join( f"> {line.strip()}" for line in unescape(description.get("content")).replace("<BR>", "\n").splitlines() if line ) local_path.with_suffix(".json").write_text(json.dumps({"transcript": transcript})) return Strip(local_path=str(local_path), transcript=transcript) @backoff.on_exception( backoff.expo, (requests.exceptions.RequestException, ValueError), max_tries=16, base=6, max_time=120, ) def ensure_uploaded(lemmy, path): print(f"Ensuring {path=} is uploaded...") marker_path = Path(path).with_suffix(".json") if marker_path.exists(): print(f"Reading uploaded path from existing {marker_path=}") metadata = json.loads(marker_path.read_text()) if "image_url" in metadata: return metadata["image_url"] else: raise Exception(f"Does not exist! {marker_path=}") print(f"Didn't find {marker_path=}, uploading") uploaded = lemmy.image.upload(path) if uploaded is None: raise ValueError("Got `None` for `uploaded`") metadata["image_url"] = uploaded[0]["image_url"] marker_path.write_text(json.dumps(metadata)) return metadata["image_url"] def ensure_posted(lemmy: Lemmy, community_id: int, date: date, strip: Strip): if date.weekday() == 6: print("It's Tuesday (i.e. Sunday in comic time), skipping post.") return posts = lemmy.post.list(community_id, sort=SortType.New) non_tribute_posts = [] for post in posts: try: comic_date = datetime.strptime(post["post"]["name"], "%d %B %Y").date() except ValueError: # Tribute Tuesday post, probably. Ignore continue non_tribute_posts.append((comic_date, post)) newest_post_date, newest_post = sorted(non_tribute_posts, key=lambda x: x[0])[-1] if newest_post_date == date: print("All caught up!") return print("Need to post latest comic") body = f"Transcript:\n\n{strip.transcript}" post = lemmy.post( community_id, date.strftime("%-d %B %Y"), url=strip.image_url, body=body, language_id=LanguageType.EN, ) if post: print(post) else: raise Exception("Failed to post!") def main(lemmy: Lemmy): year_offset = date.today().year - 2024 today = date.today().replace(year=1950 + year_offset) strip = ensure_downloaded(today) if not strip: print(f"Got {strip=}, it's probably Tuesday, so ignoring...") return else: print(strip) community_id = lemmy.discover_community("peanuts@midwest.social") strip.image_url = ensure_uploaded(lemmy, strip.local_path) ensure_posted(lemmy, community_id, today, strip) if __name__ == "__main__": main(get_authed_lemmy())
post_stuff.py
import post_oglaf import post_peanuts import post_smbc from get_lemmy import get_authed_lemmy def main(): lemmy = get_authed_lemmy() post_peanuts.main(lemmy=lemmy) post_smbc.main(lemmy=lemmy) post_oglaf.main(lemmy=lemmy) if __name__ == "__main__": main()
cc @db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com on ☝️btw,
pythorhead
has been super useful! You might be interested in the use case of handling creds like I do there, maybe that’s something the library could do?This all is over my head. I will continue to post bloomcounty manually for now. Plus I personally dislike when I see a bot posting.
If you get tired of it, get in touch. I won’t mind adding Bloom County as one the communities @dailycomic@sh.itjust.works posts to.
People don’t seem to mind with CnH. Often bots are introduced to do something without anyone asking, but with stuff like this it’s pretty clear that it’s content people like, and which they want to continue seeing. Just the first post from the bot account got a comment about it, and it was just someone saying “oh, this makes sense”.
Mine’s just 54 lines right now. Executed daily as a cron job. Wrote in some simple checks that enable it to account for leap days, or being behind. It can be made to catch up simply by having it run more than once a day.
I should make it cache the login, too.
It can be made to post any comic on gocomics, daily, in sync, simply by editing a config toml.
comciposter.py
import datetime import os import requests import pickle import toml from pythorhead import Lemmy from PIL import Image from io import BytesIO # Config config = toml.load(open(os.path.curdir+'/config.toml', 'r')) try: botstate = pickle.load(open(os.path.join(os.path.curdir, 'botstate.data'), 'rb')) except Exception: botstate = {} botstate['startdate'] = datetime.datetime.strptime(config['startdate']+' 12:00:00', '%d/%m/%Y %H:%M:%S') botstate['lastrun'] = datetime.datetime.now() - datetime.timedelta(days=1) botstate['lastpostdate'] = botstate['startdate'] - datetime.timedelta(days=1) with open(os.path.join(os.path.curdir, 'botstate.data'), 'wb') as handle: pickle.dump(botstate, handle) today = datetime.datetime.today() if datetime.datetime.now() - botstate['lastrun'] < datetime.timedelta(hours=10): print('less than a day has passed since the last post, exiting') exit(0) elif botstate['lastpostdate'].month <= today.month and botstate['lastpostdate'].day < today.day: postdate = botstate['lastpostdate'] + datetime.timedelta(days=1) title = postdate.strftime('%d %B %Y') url = 'https://www.gocomics.com/'+config['comic']+'/'+postdate.strftime('%Y/%m/%d') r = requests.get(url, allow_redirects=True) loc = int(r.text.find('https://assets.amuniversal.com/')) imgurl = r.text[loc:loc+63] img_response = requests.get(imgurl, allow_redirects=True) with Image.open(BytesIO(img_response.content)) as image: image.save(os.path.join(os.path.curdir, 'comic.webp'), 'WEBP') lemmy = Lemmy('https://'+config['Lemmy']['instance'], request_timeout=30) lemmy.log_in(config['Lemmy']['username'], config['Lemmy']['password']) try: image = lemmy.image.upload(os.path.join(os.path.curdir, 'comic.webp')) except IOError as e: print(e) exit(1) community_id = lemmy.discover_community(config['community']) post = lemmy.post.create(community_id, title, url=image[0]["image_url"]) print('posted: '+post['post_view']['post']['ap_id']) botstate['lastpostdate'] = postdate botstate['lastrun'] = datetime.datetime.now() with open(os.path.join(os.path.curdir, 'botstate.data'), 'wb') as handle: pickle.dump(botstate, handle)