Mastodon.py

Usage

Register your app! This only needs to be done once (per server, or when distributing rather than hosting an application, most likely per device and server). Uncomment the code and substitute in your information:

from mastodon import Mastodon

'''
Mastodon.create_app(
    'pytooterapp',
    api_base_url = 'https://mastodon.social',
    to_file = 'pytooter_clientcred.secret'
)
'''

Then, log in. This can be done every time your application starts (e.g. when writing a simple bot), or you can use the persisted information:

from mastodon import Mastodon

mastodon = Mastodon(client_id = 'pytooter_clientcred.secret',)
mastodon.log_in(
    'my_login_email@example.com',
    'incrediblygoodpassword',
    to_file = 'pytooter_usercred.secret'
)

Note that this won’t work when using 2FA - you’ll have to use OAuth, in that case. To post, create an actual API instance:

from mastodon import Mastodon

mastodon = Mastodon(access_token = 'pytooter_usercred.secret')
mastodon.toot('Tooting from Python using #mastodonpy !')

Introduction

Mastodon is an ActivityPub-based Twitter-like federated social network node. It has an API that allows you to interact with its every aspect. This is a simple Python wrapper for that API, provided as a single Python module.

Mastodon.py aims to implement the complete public Mastodon API. As of this time, it is feature complete for Mastodon version 3.5.5. The Mastodon compatible API layers of various other pieces of software as well as forks, while not an official target, should also be basically compatible, and Mastodon.py does make some allowances for behaviour that isn’t strictly like that of Mastodon, and attempts to support extensions to the API.

Some usage examples (not neccesarily following app development best practices, but enough to get you started if you learn best by example) can be found at https://github.com/halcy/MastodonpyExamples

Acknowledgements

Mastodon.py contains work by a large number of contributors, many of which have put significant work into making it a better library. You can find some information about who helped with which particular feature or fix in the changelog.

Research use and citing

If you use Mastodon.py in your research, please cite it according to the latest CITATION.cff from the repository:

https://github.com/halcy/Mastodon.py/blob/master/CITATION.cff

As a personal request, It is important to me to ask you to make sure that the subjects of your research - fediverse users - are alright with the research you are doing on them and/or that you have secured the approval of your institutions ethics board.

API methods

Appendix