Service to post RSS feeds to Mastodon
First, make sure dependent programs and perl modules are installed:
# apt-get install libhtml-template-perl libjson-perl libdbd-mysql libdbi-perl libxml-feed-perl \
libuuid-tiny-perl libdbd-mysql-perl curl
Then clone into your webservers /cgi-bin/ directory and make a non-cgi alias for the /static directory.
Example configuration for Apache:
Alias /cgi-bin/rsstootalizer/static /usr/lib/cgi-bin/rsstootalizer/static
ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/lib/cgi-bin/
<Directory "/usr/lib/cgi-bin">
AllowOverride None
Options +ExecCGI -MultiViews +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
Require all granted
</Directory>Finally, copy the file rsstootalizer.conf.example.json to rsstootalizer.conf.json and adapt to your setup and run ./update_db.pl to create your tables.
When that is working, make sure to regularly call cronjob.pl to actually pull and process the feeds.
Now you can log in to your very own instance of RSSTootalizer!
After logging in, you need to Add a new feed. Enter its complete URL and click on "Add Feed". All current entries will be pulled and marked as posted, that means the current entries in the feed are not posted.
Click on "Edit" to edit the feed settings. You will need to add at least one "Whitelist" filter or no entries will be ever be published. Also, you can change the format of the Toot. It would be nice if you kept the #RSSTootalizer tag, but it's by no means required. Then click "Save filters" to save them.
At the top of the Edit page, you see a button "Show raw entries". All current entries (at the time the page loaded) will be shown and color-coded. If they are red, they would not get posted with the current filterset, if they are green, they would get posted. Use this functionality to validate your filters. These codes are not live updated, you need to press "Save filters" in between changes.
After this is done, go back to your Dashboard and click on Enable to enable processing the feed. Then post new stuff to your RSS feed and watch the update!