Cory Dransfeldt

Automate and syndicate content from Eleventy to Mastodon

Cory Dransfeldt's photo
Cory Dransfeldt
·

2 min read

I've discussed building a now page using Eleventy but I also syndicate a subset of that content out to Mastodon using @11ty/eleventy-activity-feed and Make. The @11ty/eleventy-activity-feed allows you to aggregate various web feeds into a single feed, inserting entries from the feeds sequentially as they're published. My follow-feed.11ty.js looks like this:

module.exports = class {
 data() {
  return {
   permalink: '/follow.xml',
  }
 }

async render() {
  const { ActivityFeed } = await import('@11ty/eleventy-activity-feed')
  const feed = new ActivityFeed()
  feed.addSource('atom', 'Blog', 'https://coryd.dev/feed.xml')
  feed.addSource('rss', 'Letterboxd', 'https://letterboxd.com/cdme/rss')
  feed.addSource('rss', 'Glass', 'https://glass.photo/coryd/rss')
  feed.addSource('rss', 'Oku', 'https://oku.club/rss/collection/NvEmF')

  return feed.toRssFeed({
   title: "Cory Dransfeldt's activity feed",
   language: 'en',
   url: 'https://coryd.dev/follow/',
   subtitle: "Cory Dransfeldt's activity across the web.",
  })
 }
}

As I update the above feeds, my activity feed found at coryd.dev/follow.xml updates. My workflow at Make[1] watches /follow.xml, checking it every 2 hours and posting the newest item title and url to Mastodon.

If you elect to use Make for something like this you'll need to leverage the RSS module, which I've configured to return a maximum of 3 items per check and either the Mastodon or HTTP module (I've used the latter as the former errored when accessing my instance). If you use the HTTP module, the configuration is fairly simple:

  1. Log in to your instance, accessing the prefererences, then the Development menu.

  2. Create a new application, naming it whatever you'd like (mine is named coryd.dev[2]) with the write:statuses scope.

  3. Head back to Make, connecting an HTTP module to your RSS module.

  4. Add a heading named Authorization with a value of Bearer <TOKEN OBTAINED FROM YOUR MASTODON INSTANCE>

  5. Add a second heading named Accept with a value of application/json

  6. Set the body type to Application/x-www-form-urlencoded

  7. Add a field with the key set to status and the value to the Title and URL data obtained from your RSS module.

  8. Save and schedule the scenario to run at your preferred frequency.

You should now see posts from your follow feed being sent off to your Mastodon instance as they're updated.

  1. A drag and drop automation service much like Zapier or IFTTT. ↩︎

  2. For the sake of vanity or clarity with respect to the source of the post. ↩︎

JavaScriptwebdeveleventy