index.md

Open Social Distributor documentation

UNDER DEVELOPMENT

This is a tool for managing social posts across multiple platforms. Simple to configure, and able to run as a command line client, or as a service in a Docker container or an AWS CloudFormation stack.

At current time, you can build, configure, and use the CLI to post a messages, threads, and images to a variety of social networks.

Coming soon:

• A containerised service to make regular posts
• An AWS stack (to do the same)

Download binaries

See: Releases

Configuration

To add networks to your configuration, you'll need to obtain authorisation tokens with permission to post. See:

• Configuration
• Connection strings
• Authorisation tokens

Making posts

You can use the command-line interface (CLI) to make an ad-hoc post to any number of social networks.

• CLI options
• Post List format
• Post composition

Developer notes

Current state of development

See: Outstanding TODOs

Social networks supported

This project is in development. Additional capabilities are coming soon.

Network	Test	Post	Thread	Link	Tags	Images
Console	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	🆗
Mastodon	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Discord	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Facebook (page)	✅	✅	⌛️	✅	✅	✅
LinkedIn (org)	✅	✅	⌛️	✅	✅	✅
LinkedIn (member)	✅	✅	⌛️	✅	✅	✅

✅ = implemented, working ⌛️ = implemented, not fully tested yet

NB. Twitter is not a safe place to build your brand or identity, and has not been included in this list.

NB

• Console image support is purely to confirm that the image exists.
• The Facebook API does not support posting to a user feed.

Features

Component	Feature	Completion
CLI	Compose and post simple messages	✅
CLI	Json configuration file	✅
CLI	Binary release script	✅
Service	Launch in Docker	✅
Service	Support for multiple environments	✅
Service	Configuration mechanism
Service	Schedule and post messages
AWS Stack	Sync stack (for development)	✅
AWS Stack	Deploy stack (for releases)
AWS Stack	Configuration mechanism
AWS Stack	Schedule and post messages

Config support

Support scripts are found at the root of the open-social-distributor-app directory. The CLI supports configuration tests. Scripts are provided as a shortcut to build and invoke the CLI:

Script	Purpose
test-connections.sh	Builds and invokes the CLI to test the connections defined in a configuration file

Components

Component	Purpose
DistributionCLI	A CLI for basic configuration and message posting
DistributionFunction	A scheduled posting function, run as an AWS CloudWatch application stack
DistributionService	A scheduled posting service, runs as a Docker container
DistributorLib	Shared code with functionality to support the above 3 use cases

Build and deploy scripts

Build and deploy scripts are found at the root of the open-social-distributor-app directory.

Script	Purpose
export-aws-defaults.sh	Exports some default AWS environment variables.
aws-sync-stack.sh	Builds and synchronises the project code with an AWS CloudFormation stack
aws-deploy-stack.sh	UNDER DEVELOPMENT

Script	Purpose
build-all.sh	Builds dev versions of the CLI, lambda function, and service projects as .NET binaries
release-cli.sh	Builds release binaries of the CLI for Windows, OS X, and Linux

Script	Purpose
docker-run-service.sh	Builds, tests, and runs the service for the int or prod environment

Unit tests

Testing scripts are found at the root of the open-social-distributor-app directory.

Script	Purpose
run-unit-tests.sh	builds and runs all or some of the unit tests

Integration tests

Integration tests check that the distributor can connect to and post to the various social media networks.

Support for all social networks is limited - some have fewer constraints than others to create test accounts for.

Script	Purpose
run-integration-tests.sh	builds and runs the social network integration tests