📅 5/17 @ noon PT - Automating gr2m/helpdesk, Episode II

[gr2m]

💁🏻 Automating gr2m/helpdesk, Episode II
📅 Monday, May 17th, 2021
🕐 noon Pacific Time (in your timezone)
🎙️ no guests
🏷️ Automation

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Automating gr2m/helpdesk

I've laid out the current process for this repository at https://github.com/gr2m/helpdesk/tree/f085060fb98f61a005c9e79df15fdad6466c6a1a#how-i-use-this-repository. It's mostly manual. Time to spice it up a bit with some automation!

In this show, I'll try to automate the tweeting and comments on the issue belonging to the show.

Outline

1. Quick review of what I've build so far in episode I
2. Walkthrough of how I currently do the tweets and comments manually
3. Figure out a way to automate it 😁

Preparation

• Research the Twitter APIs. I have some familiarity with it from https://github.com/gr2m/twitter-together/, but things might have changed, and I'd also like to create a scheduled tweet this time.
• 30 minute announcement tweet
• start of show tweet
• recording available tweet

Recording

Shownotes

• See the first comment for information on how to sign up for a Twitter developer account, how to create an app, and how to sign up for Twitter's Ads API which is needed in order to schedule tweets via the API
• I used the twitter package
• Twitter API docs:
  • create a tweet
  • scheduled tweets
• https://github.com/octokit/webhooks - if you ever look for GitHub event example payloads or schemas

[gr2m]

Some notes ahead of the show 😁

In order to send scheduled tweets from your own account, you need to

1. Register a GitHub App (these twitter-together docs might help
2. Apply for the Twitter Ads API (these twitter-together docs might help

No idea why scheduling a tweet requires access to a dedicated Ads API but here we are. The twitter-together docs might be outdated, twitter is changing things all the time. pull requests welcome :)

Here are some snippets.

instantiate twitter and set userId and add account ID

const Twitter = require("twitter");
const twitter = new Twitter({
  consumer_key: process.env.TWITTER_CONSUMER_KEY,
  consumer_secret: process.env.TWITTER_CONSUMER_SECRET,
  access_token_key: process.env.TWITTER_ACCESS_TOKEN_KEY,
  access_token_secret: process.env.TWITTER_ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET,
});

// get account ID at https://ads.twitter.com/, press on "Create an ad", then
// copy the part the 2nd segment of the URL path, e.g.
// https://ads.twitter.com/onboarding/6zy0c/welcome?onboarding=true => 6zy0c
const accountId = "6zy0c";

// Get your Twitter account's user ID at https://codeofaninja.com/tools/find-twitter-id
const userId = "11754732";

List scheduled tweets

twitter.get(
  `https://ads-api.twitter.com/9/accounts/${accountId}/scheduled_tweets`,
  (error, result) => {
    if (error) {
      console.log(error);
      return;
    }

    console.log(result);
  }
);

Create a new scheduled tweet

twitter.post(
  `https://ads-api.twitter.com/9/accounts/${accountId}/scheduled_tweets`,
  {
    scheduled_at: "2021-05-17T18:30:00Z",
    as_user_id: userId,
    text:
      "🔴 Going live in 30 minutes: Automating gr2m/helpdesk, Episode II\n\nhttps://github.com/gr2m/helpdesk/issues/14",
    nullcast: true,
  },
  (error, result) => {
    if (error) {
      console.log(`error`);
      console.log(error);
      return;
    }

    console.log(result);
  }
);

[gr2m]

Twitter API documentation for scheduled tweets:
https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/twitter-ads-api/creatives/api-reference/scheduled-tweets

[gr2m]

I mentioned https://github.com/octokit/webhooks/ in the show. It has very complete JSON schemas and payload examples for all of GitHub's webhook event requests. Much more complete than what GitHub has on its own developer docs. It's a great @octokit community initiative by @wolfy1339 and other contributors

[gr2m]

Recording is now available on twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1026105427

[gr2m]

The video is now archived on YouTube: https://youtu.be/9Y68cC7nR68

Feel free to add comments if you have more questions