Collecting Emacs News from Mastodon

| emacs, mastodon

One of the things I like about browsing Mastodon in Emacs using mastodon.el is that I can modify my workflow to make things easier. For example, I often come across links that I'd like to save for Emacs News. I want to boost the post and save it to an Org file, and I can do that with a single keystroke. It uses the my-mastodon-store-link function defined elsewhere in my config. 

(use-package org
  :config
  (add-to-list
   'org-capture-templates
   '("w" "Emacs News" entry (file+headline "~/sync/orgzly/news.org" "Collect Emacs News")
     "* %a  :news:

#+begin_quote
%:text
#+end_quote

"
     :prepend t :immediate-finish t)))
(defun my-mastodon-save-toot-for-emacs-news ()
  (interactive)
  ;; boost if not already boosted
  (unless (get-text-property
           (car
            (mastodon-tl--find-property-range 'byline (point)))
           'boosted-p)
    (mastodon-toot--toggle-boost-or-favourite 'boost))
  ;; store a link and capture the note
  (org-capture nil "w"))

(use-package mastodon
  :bind (:map mastodon-mode-map ("w" . my-mastodon-save-toot-for-emacs-news)))

This puts a bunch of notes in my ~/sync/orgzly/news.org file. Then I can use my-emacs-news-summarize-mastodon-items to summarize a bunch of items I've captured from Mastodon, taking the title from the first link and including a link to the toot using the author's handle. This is what it looks like:

output-2024-09-16-13:14:38.gif
Figure 1: Quick screencast summarizing Mastodon toots

Here's the code that makes that happen: 

(defun my-emacs-news-summarize-mastodon-items ()
  (interactive)
  (while (not (eobp))
    (let* ((info (my-mastodon-get-note-info))
           (title (when (car (plist-get info :links))
                    (my-page-title (car (plist-get info :links)))))
           (summary (read-string
                     (if title
                         (format "Summary (%s): " title)
                       "Summary: ")
                     title)))
      (org-cut-subtree)
      (unless (string= summary "")
        (insert "- " (org-link-make-string
                      (or (car (plist-get info :links))
                          (plist-get info :url))
                      summary)
                (if (and (car (plist-get info :links))
                         (plist-get info :handle))
                    (concat " (" (org-link-make-string (plist-get info :url)
                                                       (plist-get info :handle))
                            ")")
                  "")
                "\n")))))
(defun my-mastodon-get-note-info ()
  "Return (:handle ... :url ... :links ... :text) for the current subtree."
  (let ((url (org-entry-get (point) "ITEM"))
        beg end
        handle)
    (save-excursion
      (org-back-to-heading)
      (org-end-of-meta-data)
      (setq beg (point))
      (setq end (org-end-of-subtree))
      (when (string-match "https://\\(.+?\\)/\\(@.+?\\)/" url)
        (setq handle (concat
                      (match-string 2 url) "@" (match-string 1 url))))

      (list
       :handle handle
       :url (if (string-match org-link-bracket-re url) (match-string 1 url) url)
       :links (mapcar (lambda (o) (org-element-property :raw-link o))
                      (my-org-get-links-in-region beg end))
       :text (string-trim (buffer-substring-no-properties beg end))))))

(ert-deftest my-mastodon-get-note-info ()
 (should
  (equal
   (with-temp-buffer
     (insert "** SOMEDAY https://mastodon.online/@jcastp/111762105597746747         :news:
:PROPERTIES:
:CREATED:  [2024-01-22 Mon 05:51]
:END:

jcastp@mastodon.online - I've shared my emacs config: https://codeberg.org/jcastp/emacs.d

After years of reading other's configs, copying really useful snippets, and tinkering a little bit myself, I wanted to give something back, although I'm still an amateur (and it shows, but I want to improve!)

If you can find there something you can use, then I'm happy to be useful to the community.

#emacs
")
     (org-mode)
     (my-mastodon-get-note-info))
   '(:handle "@jcastp@mastodon.online"
             :url
             "https://mastodon.online/@jcastp/111762105597746747"
             :links
             ("https://codeberg.org/jcastp/emacs.d")
             :text
             "jcastp@mastodon.online - I've shared my emacs config: https://codeberg.org/jcastp/emacs.d\n\nAfter years of reading other's configs, copying really useful snippets, and tinkering a little bit myself, I wanted to give something back, although I'm still an amateur (and it shows, but I want to improve!)\n\nIf you can find there something you can use, then I'm happy to be useful to the community.\n\n#emacs"))))

It turns headings into something like this:

which I can then copy into my Emacs News Org Mode file and categorize with some keyboard shortcuts.

This works particularly well with my combined Mastodon timelines, because then I can look through all the #emacs posts from mastodon.social, emacs.ch, and social.sachachua.com in one go.

This is part of my Emacs configuration.
You can comment with Disqus or you can e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.