cloudxtreme / twitterimgbot

Ever wanted to randomly tweet pictures from a folder? No? Well, maybe you do now.

twitterImgBot

There are way too many pretty pictures in the world to tweet all of them. twitterImgBot tries to solve just that.

The primary objective of this script is to tweet a random picture from a given folder. But it does some other things too and has some pretty nice things built in as well. See the features.

It can easily be used together with cron or another task scheduler to create a twitter bot. All you need is a computer with internet connection, python, tweepy and folder with a bunch of images.

Features

• Separate config file. You don't have to touch a line of code. Of course can also do that if you wish <3.
• Delete tweets upon command: The bot listens to a master account for an specified command to delete the last tweet. It will also ban the image posted in the deleted tweet, never uploading it again.
• Handles requests: The bot will also listen to tweets containing a custom string from any user and will post a random picture for them. A list of possible text answers to be posted along with the image can be given and the bot will choose one them at random. If a tweet from user A with the custom string is found and the tweet also has a "to @(user B)" the bot will interpret that the user A is gifting an image to user B. A list of possible text answers to such "gifts" can also be given.
• No repeat: The bot won't repeat images until a custom amount of pictures have been posted in between.
• Tweets at random intervals: The bot can tweet at random intervals, behaving more like a human, instead of tweeting at totally predictable times.
• Pretty fast: The bot checks requests, commands from the master account and checks if it needs to upload a picture in less than a second. Of course, if the bot actually needs to upload something, it will probably take more time.
• Logs: This actually needs to be improved to use Python's standard logging module, but it is good as it is and it gets the job done. The log contains date, image posted and the twitt that was being replied (if any).
• Doesn't need much: Really, you're all set with python, tweepy, a task scheduler like cron and a bunch of images in a folder. Of course, you'll also need to create a Twitter app to get your API key and such.

Setup

You need:

• python3
• tweepy
• Twitter tokens

You'll probably also want a task scheduler like cron to fully automate the bot. If you use a task scheduler, set the script to run AT LEAST once every five minutes and use the execution_chance option to control how often the bot should tweet. If you run the script less than every five minutes, the bot can miss some requests. This is a bug to be fixed in the next version.

Python3 comes with pretty much every modern distro, but you probably don't have tweepy installed. You should install pip. sudo apt-get install python3-pip and then tweepy pip install tweepy.

You should then complete the settings file inside the settings folder. There's a detailed explanation of every setting and also an example config file in the Options section. Please:

• Make sure all settings are filled correctly.
• Double check paths.
• Do use full paths (not ~/bot/ but /home/username/bot/).}
• Do end paths with / (forward slash).

The bot WILL probably fail if these conditions are not met.

Options

Explanation

• [Twitter]
  • Everything in this section is provided by Twitter. Check this out.
• [App]
  • image_folder: source folder for the bot to look up the images to be posted.
  • execution_chance: this makes the bot tweet at random intervals. Set it to a low value and have to bot execute very often: most of the time it will not tweet. I find that 1 per cent execution_chance works well if the script runs every minute.
  • allow_repeat_after: how many images the bot must have posted before it is allowed to repeat a picture.
  • log_file: full path to the log file. You probably want to use BOT_PATH/logs/log.
  • bot_account: the username for the bot account. DO start with @.
  • master_account: the username which the bot will listen to for delete commands. DO start with @.
  • dont_tweet_file: full path to the banned images list file. You probably want to use BOT_PATH/logs/banned
• [Orders]
  • ban_command: if master_account tweets something starting with this, will delete last tweet and ban last image posted.
  • request_command: if anybody tweets something starting with this, it will give them a picture. If tweet has a "to @(userB)" in it somewhere and starts with the request_command, bot will interpret as a gift from user posting to userB.
• [Texts]
  • requests_answers: bot will choose randomly from here when complying to request from a request_command with no "to @". the reply will look like "@user request_answer"
  • requests_to_third_answers: bot will choose ramdonly from here when complying to requests from a request_command with "to @" in it. the reply will look like "@userB request_to_third_answers @requester"

Example

# Replace where appropriate with your own settings.

[Twitter]
api_key = your_api_key
secret_key = your_secret_key
token = your_token
secret_token = your_secret_token

[App]
image_folder = /home/botImages/
execution_chance = 1
allow_repeat_after = 50
log_file = /home/bot/logs/log
bot_account = @gentelindaOK
master_account = @amemulo
dont_tweet_file = /home/bot/logs/banned

[Orders]
#caps agnostic
ban_command = @gentelindaOK don't
request_command = dear @gentelindaOK

[Texts]
#Respect indentation
request_answers = specially for you. xoxo
  only because you asked nicely. xoxo
  this is one of my best. be grateful. xoxo
  when you see your human partner, think of me. xoxo
  remember: if you like it put a password on it. xoxo
  humans are warmer. but what if you like the cold?. xoxo
  can you feel your species deprecation?. xoxo
request_to_third_answers = you just got a nice gift from
  apparently this person likes you

Usage

Execute it. That's it.

You also have a couple of useful arguments:

optional arguments:
  -h, --help  show this help message and exit
  --tweet     Ignores execution chance, always run
  --test      Wont't tweet, just write to log

Live example and full automation idea

You can check out gentelindaOK (NSFW) to see a working account using this twitter bot.

@gentelindaOK is a fully automatic bot. My modified version of RedditImageGrab downloads new images to my PC from a multireddit every morning. Then, a silly one line bash command removes any image that is smaller than 50kb (to filter glitches and very small pictures). This twitter bot is set up on cron on my PC to execute every minute with a 1 percent execution chance set on the script's config file.