Nitter

Nitter is an alternative Twitter front-end that focuses on privacy and performance.

This is a forked version of Nitter (original version) with the following enhancements

• Twitter authentication baked-in: Instead of fiddling with bash or nodejs or python scripts, Twitter authentication is baked-in. Simply pass in Twitter username and password as environment variables or JSON files to authenticate Nitter with guest accounts.
• Easier configuration: Pass in environment variables to configure Nitter instead of making a configuration file. This is particularly useful for deploying on PaaS where mounting configuration files might be difficult.
• Redis baked-in: Optionally start a Redis instance in addition to the Nitter instance. This is also particularly useful for deploying on PaaS where they charge a Redis instance additionally.
• Anti-abuse baked-in: Optionally start a Nginx instance in front of the Nitter instance that password protects it to prevent malicious scrapers
• Fix video playback via Nitter proxying
• Fix photo rail section on profile page
• Add optional Sentry error reporting
• Add bookmarklet that opens protected RSS URLs from Twitter pages and subscribes them to Miniflux or Inoreader
• Unified Docker image for x86_64 and arm64

Usage

• The forked docker image (with baked-in Twitter authentication, Redis, Nginx, ratelimit retrier, etc) is ghcr.io/sekai-soft/nitter-self-contained:latest
  • The original docker image is ghcr.io/sekai-soft/nitter:latest. This version will contain fixes to Nitter itself, but not the auxillary components such as baked-in Twitter authentication and etc.
• You should sign up and use a burner/temporary Twitter account with 2FA disabled.
• You need a volume mapping into the container path /nitter-data
  • This is regardless whether you wish to enable Redis. The volume is needed to persist Twitter authetication info even if Redis is disabled.
• Specify environment variables

Key	Required	Comment
NITTER_ACCOUNTS_FILE	Yes	/nitter-data/guest_accounts.json
TWITTER_USERNAME	Maybe	Burner Twitter account username. Set either this or TWITTER_CREDENTIALS_FILE
TWITTER_PASSWORD	Maybe	Burner Twitter account password. Set either this or TWITTER_CREDENTIALS_FILE
TWITTER_MFA_CODE	No	Current MFA code for the burner Twitter account credentials. Make sure you deploy fast enough so that it doesn't expire. It will also need to be replaced for consequent deployments.
TWITTER_CREDENTIALS_FILE	Maybe	Path to a json list file of burner Twitter account credentials. Set either this or TWITTER_USERNAME and TWITTER_PASSWORD (optionally TWITTER_MFA_CODE).
DISABLE_REDIS	No	Use 1 to disable the built-in Redis. You should ensure an external Redis instance is ready to connect before launching the container
REDIS_HOST	No	Hostname for the Redis instance to connect to. Probably required if using an external Redis instance. Defaults to localhost.
REDIS_PORT	No	Port for the Redis instance to connect to. Probably required if using an external Redis instance. Defaults to 6379.
REDIS_PASSWORD	No	Password for the Redis instance to connect to. Probably required if using an external Redis instance. Defaults to empty string.
DISABLE_NGINX	No	Use 1 to disable the built-in Nginx. Strongly discouraged if the container is exposed to the Internet.
INSTANCE_RSS_PASSWORD	No	If the built-in Nginx is not disabled, required password used to protect all /rss paths. In order to access them you need to specify a .../rss?key=<password> query parameter.
INSTANCE_WEB_USERNAME	No	If the built-in Nginx is not disabled, required basic auth username to protect all non-rss web UIs.
INSTANCE_WEB_PASSWORD	No	If the built-in Nginx is not disabled, required basic auth password to protect all non-rss web UIs.
INSTANCE_BASE64_MEDIA	No	Use 1 to enable base64-encoded media.
INSTANCE_PORT	No	Port that your Nitter instance binds to. Default to 8080
INSTANCE_TITLE	No	Name of your Nitter instance shown on the web UI. Defaults to My Nitter instance.
INSTANCE_THEME	No	Default theme of the web UI. Available options are Black, Dracula, Mastodon, Nitter, Pleroma, Twitter and Twitter Dark. Defaults to Nitter.
INSTANCE_INFINITE_SCROLL	No	Use 1 to enable infinite scrolling. Enabling this option will load Javascript on the web UI.
INSTANCE_HOSTNAME	No	The hostname used to render public-facing URLs such as hyperlinks in RSS feeds. Defaults to localhost:8080.
INSTANCE_HTTPS	No	Use 1 to enable serving https traffic.
DEBUG	No	Use 1 to log debug messages.
RESET_NITTER_ACCOUNTS_FILE	No	Use 1 to remove the existing /nitter-data/guest_accounts.json file
INSTANCE_ENABLE_DEBUG	No	Use 1 to enable debug logging
INSTANCE_RSS_MINUTES	No	How long to cache RSS. Defaults to 10.
USE_CUSTOM_CONF	No	Use 1 to pass in custom nitter.conf. Make sure /src/nitter.conf is mounted.

• After the container is up, Nitter is available at port 8081 within the container if Nginx is enabled, and at port 8080 within the container if Nginx is disabled.

Develop Nitter itself

1. Start Redis

redis-server &

2. TBD You need a guest_accounts.json file

3. Start development build. Access the instance at localhost:8080

nimble run

4. Flush Redis cache

redis-cli flushall

Develop enhanced version

1. You need a .env file with the following

TWITTER_USERNAME=
TWITTER_PASSWORD=
INSTANCE_RSS_PASSWORD=
INSTANCE_WEB_USERNAME=
INSTANCE_WEB_PASSWORD=

For testing twitter-credentials.json, remove TWITTER_USERNAME and TWITTER_PASSWORD in .env file and uncomment lines with twitter-credentials.json in docker-compose.yml

2. Run

docker compose up --build

3. Access the password protected Nitter instance at localhost:8081

4. TBD Integration test is located in tests/integration.py. Docker compose stack logs are exported to integration-test.logs after the test is run.

Some inner working details

• Multiple processes are orchestrated by overmind
• /src/scripts/dump_env_and_procfile.sh was needed before overmind can execute
  • dump_env_and_procfile.sh writes the Procfile of course
  • dump_env_and_procfile.sh also writes expected environment variables to .env because overmind does not seem to inherit environment so it had to be an .env file