Random Wikipedia Poster

Random-Wikipedia-Poster is a Python script that automatically fetches a random Wikipedia article and posts a summary of it, along with a relevant image, to Twitter every hour.

Features

• Fetches a random Wikipedia article every hour.
• Posts a summary of the article along with a thumbnail image to Twitter.
• Filters out articles based on specified categories to avoid certain types of content.
• Uses TinyURL to shorten the Wikipedia URL for the tweet.
• Adds a random emoji to each tweet for visual appeal.

Installation

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/yourusername/Random-Wikipedia-Poster.git
   cd Random-Wikipedia-Poster

2. Install dependencies:

   pip install requests wikipedia-api beautifulsoup4 tweepy pyWikiCommons cairosvg pillow

3. Set up Twitter API keys:

   Create a text file with your Twitter API keys and tokens in the following order:

   API_KEY
   API_SECRET_KEY
   CLIENT_ID
   CLIENT_SECRET
   ACCESS_TOKEN
   ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET
   BEARER_TOKEN
   

   Save this file at your desired location (e.g., keys.txt).

Usage

Run the script with the path to your keys file:

python random_wikipedia_poster.py --keyloc /path/to/your/keys.txt

Script Details

Arguments

• --keyloc: The path to the file containing your Twitter API keys and tokens.

Main Components

• Authentication: Uses tweepy for Twitter API authentication.
• Fetching Random Wikipedia Article: Uses Wikipedia API to fetch a random article.
• Filtering Articles: Articles in certain categories (defined in bad_categories) are filtered out.
• Shortening URLs: Uses TinyURL API to shorten the Wikipedia URL for the tweet.
• Posting to Twitter: Posts the article summary and image to Twitter.

Function Overview

• check_page(random_page, data): Checks if the fetched Wikipedia page is suitable for posting.
• run(): Main loop that fetches articles, checks suitability, prepares the tweet, and posts it to Twitter.
• shorten_url(long_url): Shortens the given URL using TinyURL API.
• random_emoji(): Returns a random emoji from a predefined list.
• tweet(api, message, image_path): Posts the tweet with or without an image.

Error Handling

If an error occurs, the script will print the error message and retry after one minute.

Contributing

If you find any issues or have suggestions for improvements, please open an issue or create a pull request.

Acknowledgements

• Wikipedia API for fetching Wikipedia content.
• Tweepy for interacting with the Twitter API.
• CairoSVG for converting SVG images to PNG.

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Ryan Feller Last Updated June 16, 2024