TMNT Wikipedia Bot

Every 60 minutes this Python script posts to https://twitter.com/wiki_tmnt and https://botsin.space/@tmnt

Why

For fun! Inspired by https://xkcd.com/1412/

How

When it runs, it:

• Pulls 10 random Wikipedia article titles
• Checks if they are in trochaic tetrameter
  • If not, pull 10 more articles ad infinitum until a match is found
• Create a faux-TMNT logo containing the wiki title
  • I'm using the logic at http://glench.com/tmnt to do this
• Post the title and generated logo to @wiki_tmnt on Twitter

Environment

This script requires the following:

• Python >= 3.7
  • Earlier may work, only tested on 3.7
• Chrome >= 57
• Via PyPi:
  • pronouncing
  • num2words
  • PIL

For @wiki_tmnt it runs on a cron job on my local machine.

Configuration

I haven't defined a config file format yet, it's in the TODO list below. Common config knobs are currently mostly in lib/constants.py.

Caveats

I'm not developing this for anyone but myself, so you may see some anti-patterns like hardcoded paths specific to my environment, and general lack of configurability outside editing the source.

Given this runs once per hour, I'm not very concerned about performance. I often choose slow, but readable and easy-to-implement solutions.

TODO

TODO:

• More docstrings
• README
• CLI arguments
• use real file format for keys
• refactor key fetching to be done once
• Integration tests
• more unit tests
• actually enable option to run doctests
• Run glench.com/tmnt locally

Super bonus points:

• CI
• Mastodon
• zipapp release
• archive posts locally
• cache of titles : stresses