MWatcher - Notify LinkedIn/Twitter/Email from Medium RSS Feed (hostless)

Use Github Actions to watch your RSS Feed (tested on Medium) and post to Twitter, LinkedIn and Email (no database)

Check the runs here: https://github.com/FagnerMartinsBrack/medium-watcher/actions

It uses an In Memory Event Emitter which you can use to subscribe Notification Targets to the "NEW_POST" event.

You can add more notification targets by creating a new listener:

eventEmitter.addListener('NEW_POST', (postDetails) => {
  sendToNewTarget(postDetails);
});

If you implement a new Notification Target, follow the docs here.

How to use it

1. Fork this project
2. Add your own environment variables to Github Actions as "Secrets" (https://github.com/you_user/your_project/settings/variables/actions)
3. Add the same variables to an .env file hidden in the root to be able to test the project locally.

Example of local .env file:

export MEDIUM_FEED_URL= # e.g https://medium.com/@fagnerbrack/feed

# Linkedin
export LINKEDIN_CLIENT_ID=
export LINKEDIN_ACCESS_TOKEN=
export LINKEDIN_PERSON_ID=

# Twitter
export TWITTER_CONSUMER_KEY=
export TWITTER_CONSUMER_SECRET=
export TWITTER_ACCESS_TOKEN=
export TWITTER_ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET=

# Email
export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=
export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=
export AWS_REGION= # e.g ap-southeast-2
export EMAIL_FROM= # e.g user@example.com
export EMAIL_RECIPIENTS= # e.g user@example.com,otheruser@example.com

# Comma separated list of targets to enable
# Optional
# Default: Enable all notification targets
export ENABLED_TARGETS=twitter,linkedin,email

# Ignores execution of all targets and logs a warning instead
# Optional
# Default: false
export TEST_MODE=true

# Replaces feed link component. Good for SEO on Medium as they don't add your registered domain to the feed item link
# Optional
# Default: no replacement
# Format: "target,replacement" or replace "this,that"
export REPLACE_FEED_ITEM_LINK_DOMAIN=fagnerbrack.medium.com,fagnerbrack.com

Access Tokens

Twitter

To generate a new Twitter Access Token, run:

npm run twitter:generate-access-token

Follow the console prompts.

LinkedIn

To generate a LinkedIn Access Token, do it manually:

https://www.linkedin.com/developers/tools/oauth?clientId={your_app_client_id}

You have to create a company page with your name first.

Email (SES)

For email, we use SES. You can use any other email provider by extending the sendEmail() function and the environment vars.

To create an AWS access key, follow the docs: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/aws-sec-cred-types.html#access-keys-and-secret-access-keys

Execution

Wait for cron execution (which checks for a new post every hour) or run it manually locally.

To run manually, write export TEST_MODE=true in the .env file and run:

npm run broadcast

It will only execute the logging event handler.

Test Integration

To test Twitter integration locally, run the following command:

npm run twitter:create-test-post

To test LinkedIn integration locally, run the following command:

npm run linkedin:create-test-post

---

Let me know if you have issues and please help improve the documentation by creating PRs so others can use it too!

Improvements Required:

• Automate LinkedIn token refresh. Today it lasts 60 days after you run manually to get an access token and it doesn't refresh (which will make the token valid for a year)
• Requires your Medium post to not be scheduled near the 30th minute of the CronJob. For example, it may not trigger notifications if the post is scheduled to be published at 08:30 and the CronJob runs at 09:30, given it may delay by up to 5 minutes to start and then it will be too late to consider the post as a new post.
• Support pulling Medium feed in a variable cadence other than the static "every 1 hour"
• Support more than one post published in an hour. Currently it only supports notifying one post every hour.
• Differentiate Medium posts from Medium comments so to notify only posts. Is it possible?
• Make it platform-agnostic so it doesn't work only on Medium