Command line scripts and tools for implementing Twython functions.

Incorporates functions from other Python libraries and modules, including twython, requests, GPGME (as gpg), and foad.py (optional).

Use of Tor is optional.

Neither the original python-gnupg wrapper module maintained by Vinay Sajip nor the newer gnupg wrapper module by Isis Lovecruft are used in this project. Instead GPGME's built-in Python bindings are used to interact with the C API and take advantage of all the security benefits that come with it. This includes, but is not limited to, leveraging gpg-agent to handle all password or passphrase entry, instead of handling it directly.

The foad.py script is here.

Python version specific information is in the docs/ directory.

• Python 3.4 or greater.
• Current version of Twython.
• Current version of Requests.
• The GNU Privacy Guard.
• GPGME 1.8.0 or greater.

I recommend reinstalling Requests with the --upgrade flag after Twython is installed as Twython tends to install an older version. As this code depends on Twython you can skip Requests and rely on the version installed by Twython by default.

To use the scripts which post images to Twitter requires additional software not included in this project. In particular wkhtmltoimage, which is a component of wkhtmltopdf. Some people might prefer to use ImageMagick or something else instead. To convert text to HTML or XHTML I use the Haskell program, Pandoc.

The main scripts affected by this are tweet-full.py and tweet-long.py. The former uses whatever images are fed to it and the latter uses specific programs (Pandoc and wkhtmltoimage) to generate an image of text from a text file. Most often the text file will be converted from Markdown, reStructuredText or Emacs' Org-Mode. The default or fallback is to use Markdown, especially if the extension is .txt.

• Python 3.4 or greater.
• Current version of Twython.
• Current version of Requests.
• Latest release of GPG 2.1 (or above).
• Current version of GPGME.
• Current version of Pandoc.
• Current version of wkhtmltopdf.
• Current version of Tor or the Tor Browser.

Note that Tor only needs to be running to be used. The code will automatically test for the presence of a SOCKS or HTTP proxy on the standard Tor ports (9050 and 9150) and the standard Privoxy port (8118) to connect through. If those ports are open, then it will be used, otherwise it will connect directly.

Note: it may be necessary to use sudo on POSIX systems (including OS X):

pip3 install --upgrade twython
pip3 install --upgrade requests

To install the gpg module should not be installed with pip or otherwise installing the version on PyPI (version 1.10.0). Instead the module is dynamically generated and bound the GPGME C API when GPGME is compiled and installed. See the GPGME Python bindings HOWTO for full details and instructions.

My email address is in most of the scripts in this project as well as included in my GPG key as the primary user ID.

A minimised copy of my GPG key is in the Documentation/ directory (ben-key-min.asc), this version does not include all the current signatures. Refreshing that key from the key servers will restore those signatures.

To get my key directly from the servers run:

gpg --recv-keys 0x321E4E2373590E5D

To refresh my key if it is already in your keyring run:

gpg --refresh-keys 0x321E4E2373590E5D

You can also visit my website or follow me on Twitter.

The scripts generally take their parameters on the command line, but are also able to receive those parameters through interactive text prompts. Generally I recommend the latter at least until you are familiar enough with the order to run them without those prompts (or until I get around to updating them to use argparse).