@TrendingGitlab

A twitter bot (@TrendingGitlab) to tweet trending repositories from GitLab.

Follow us at @TrendingGitlab.

Important: This is not an official GitLab or Twitter product.

Features

• Tweets trending projects every 30 minutes
• Refreshes the configuration of twitters URL shortener t.co every 24 hours
• Greylisting of repositories for 30 days (to avoid tweeting a project multiple times in a short timeframe)
• Maximum use of 140 chars per tweet to fill up with information
• Debug / development mode
• Multiple storage backends (currently Redis and in memory)

Installation

1. Download the latest release
2. Extract the archive (zip / tar.gz)
3. Start the bot via ./TrendingGitlab -debug

For linux this can look like:

curl -L  https://github.com/whitef0x0/TrendingGitlab/releases/download/v0.4.0/TrendingGitlab-v0.4.0-linux-amd64.tar.gz -o TrendingGitlab-v0.4.0-linux-amd64.tar.gz
tar xzvf TrendingGitlab-v0.4.0-linux-amd64.tar.gz
cd TrendingGitlab-v0.4.0-linux-amd64
./TrendingGitlab -debug

Usage

$ go run main.go
Usage of go run main.go
  -debug
    	Outputs the tweet instead of tweet it (useful for development). Env var: TRENDINGGITHUB_DEBUG
  -expvar-port int
    	Port which will be used for the expvar TCP server. Env var: TRENDINGGITHUB_EXPVAR_PORT (default 8123)
  -storage-auth string
    	Storage Auth (e.g. myPassword or <empty>). Env var: TRENDINGGITHUB_STORAGE_AUTH
  -storage-url string
    	Storage URL (e.g. 1.2.3.4:6379 or :6379). Env var: TRENDINGGITHUB_STORAGE_URL (default ":6379")
  -twitter-access-token string
    	Twitter-API: Access token. Env var: TRENDINGGITHUB_TWITTER_ACCESS_TOKEN
  -twitter-access-token-secret string
    	Twitter-API: Access token secret. Env var: TRENDINGGITHUB_TWITTER_ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET
  -twitter-conf-refresh-time duration
    	Twitter: Time interval to refresh the configuration of twitter (e.g. char length for short url). Env var: TRENDINGGITHUB_TWITTER_CONF_REFRESH_TIME (default 24h0m0s)
  -twitter-consumer-key string
    	Twitter-API: Consumer key. Env var: TRENDINGGITHUB_TWITTER_CONSUMER_KEY
  -twitter-consumer-secret string
    	Twitter-API: Consumer secret. Env var: TRENDINGGITHUB_TWITTER_CONSUMER_SECRET
  -twitter-follow-new-person
    	Twitter: Follows a friend of one of our followers. Env var: TRENDINGGITHUB_TWITTER_FOLLOW_NEW_PERSON
  -twitter-follow-new-person-time duration
    	Growth hack: Time interval to search for a new person to follow. Env var: TRENDINGGITHUB_TWITTER_FOLLOW_NEW_PERSON_TIME (default 45m0s)
  -twitter-tweet-time duration
    	Twitter: Time interval to search a new project and tweet it. Env var: TRENDINGGITHUB_TWITTER_TWEET_TIME (default 30m0s)
  -version
    	Outputs the version number and exit. Env var: TRENDINGGITHUB_VERSION

Every parameter can be set by environment variable as well.

Twitter-API settings (twitter-access-token, twitter-access-token-secret, twitter-consumer-key and twitter-consumer-secret) are necessary to use the Twitter API and to set up a tweet by your application. You can get those settings by Twitter's application management.

If you want to play around or develop this bot, use the debug setting. It avoids using the Twitter API for tweet purposes and outputs the tweet on stdout.

The Redis url (storage-url)is the address of the Redis server in format ip:port (e.g. 192.168.0.12:6379). If your server is running on localhost you can use :6379 as a shortcut. storage-auth is the authentication string necessary for your Redis server if you use the Authentication feature.

Storage backends

Why is a storage backend needed at all?

We are looking for popular projects in a regular interval. To avoid tweeting a project or developer multiple times after another we add those records to a blacklist for a specific time.

At the moment there are two backends implemented:

• Memory (used in development)
• Redis (used in production)

Growth hack

We implemented a small growth hack to get a few followers. This hack was suggested by my colleague @mre. It works like described:

• Get all followers from @TrendingGitlab
• Choose a random one and get the followers of the choosen person
• Check if this person follows us already
• If yes, repeat
• If no, follow this person

This feature can be activated via the twitter-follow-new-person flag.

Motivation

I love to discover new tools, new projects, new languages, new coding best practices, new exciting ideas and new people who share the same passion like me. I use twitter a lot and wanted to have a place to check trending repositories on GitLab as there seemed to be no bot or service currently doing this.

License

This project is released under the terms of the MIT license.