Documenting a bit

README.md

@@ -1,12 +1,12 @@
 # Mastodon Hashtag Spreader
 
-For the #GPN19 my Mastodon instance fem.social wants to get all posts of the hashtag. Most users of this event are connected to the instance chaos.social.
+For the #GPN19 my Mastodon instance [fem.social](https://fem.social) wants to get all posts of the hashtag. Most users of this event are connected to the instance [chaos.social](https://chaos.social).
 
 ## Our solution
 We have a script on one of our servers, streaming all posts of one hashtag from chaos.socail and putting the url of the post to the search entry of our own instance. The url will get fetched by our instace and the resulting post is added to our hashtag timeline.
 
-## Installing
-```
+## Installation
+```bash
 pip3 install Mastodon.py
 git clone https://github.com/clerie/mastodon-hashtag-spreader.git
 cd mastodon-hashtag-spreader/
@@ -14,6 +14,16 @@ cp config.json.example config.json
 nano config.json
 ```
 Edit config for your needs.
-```
+```bash
 python3 hashtag-spreader.py
 ```
+
+## Scopes
+To get this script work, you need an application token on each instance you want to get connected to.
+The needed scopes are depending on the role of the instace.
+
+### Source
+* `read:statuses`
+
+### Drain
+* `read:search`

config.json.example

@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 {
   "instances": {
-    "chaos.social": "secret",
-    "fem.social": "secret"
+    "chaos.social": "access-token",
+    "fem.social": "access-token"
   },
   "spreads": [
     {

hashtag-spreader.py

@@ -10,35 +10,47 @@ def print_status(status):
     print("from: @" + status["account"]["acct"])
 
 class TootListener(StreamListener):
+    """
+    Listener class, handling incoming statuses
+    """
     def __init__(self, source, drain):
-        self.source = source
-        self.drain = drain
+        self.source = source # Source instance Mastodon object
+        self.drain = drain # Drain instance Mastodon object
 
     def on_update(self, status):
+        # Just printing some stuff to make it look beautiful in terminal
+        # More for debugging than anything else
         print("")
         print("--")
         print("RECIEVE " + self.source.api_base_url + "")
         print_status(status)
         print("SEARCH " + self.drain.api_base_url + "")
+
+        # Searching for the URL of the incoming status in our drain instance
         try:
             search = self.drain.search(status.url)
             for s in search["statuses"]:
                 print_status(s)
         except:
             print("failed")
+
         print("--")
 
 class HashtagSpreader(Thread):
+    """
+    Thread class, streaming one hashtag from one the source instance and searching for the post URL in the drain instance
+    """
     def __init__(self, source, drain, hashtag):
-        Thread.__init__(self)
+        Thread.__init__(self) # Configure the thread
 
-        self.source = source
-        self.drain = drain
-        self.hashtag = hashtag
+        self.source = source # Source instance Mastodon object
+        self.drain = drain # Drain instance Mastodon object
+        self.hashtag = hashtag # The hashtag (without #) as a string, we want to stream
 
     def run(self):
         tootListener = TootListener(self.source, self.drain)
-        self.source.stream_hashtag(self.hashtag, tootListener)
+        self.source.stream_hashtag(self.hashtag, tootListener) # Stream our hashtag
+
 
 if __name__ == "__main__":
     instances = {}
@@ -48,14 +60,16 @@ if __name__ == "__main__":
         config = json.load(f)
 
     if config:
+        # Create Mastodon objects for every instance
         for instance in config["instances"]:
             instances[instance] = Mastodon(access_token = config["instances"][instance], api_base_url = "https://" + instance)
 
+        # Create threads for every hashtag of a relation
         for spread in config["spreads"]:
             if spread["source"] in instances and spread["drain"] in instances:
                 for hashtag in spread["hashtags"]:
                     threads.append(HashtagSpreader(instances[spread["source"]], instances[spread["drain"]], hashtag))
 
-
+    # Start all threads
     for thread in threads:
         thread.start()