I've been working on a small command line tool recently. It's essentially a simple way to write a short post on Micro.blog from the command line, called pst.
It's probably not the typical place people tend to do their microblogging. But I did it for a few reasons:
- I live in a terminal when I use a computer, so it's easy for me to quickly write a post, or share a link. I don't always have Micro.blog open.
- There's obviously less distractions when you can just post and carry on with whatever you were doing.
- It's a simple idea, so it would be perfect to use it as a learning oppurtunity.
- I don't get many ideas for small projects like this, so I have to run with them. Otherwise I'd never build anything.
So, now you know the reasons, I'll explain a bit more about pst, how to install it, configure your blog, and also how to use it.
First of all, you can install pst from crates.io or homebrew:
crates.io
cargo install pst
homebrew
brew tap chrishannah/pst
brew install pst
To configure pst, all you need to do is to generate an app token from Micro.blog
(find that in your Account settings), and then store that in a JSON file under
~/.config/pst/config.json. The specific format is in the README.
Using pst is pretty simple, you have the pst command, followed by the type
(post or draft), and then your content. Examples:
pst draft "don't show this to anyone"
pst post "hello, losers!"
After that, you'll see some handy links in the terminal for where you can view, preview, or edit the post on Micro.blog.
I forgot to also say that it's built with Rust! I'd been wanting to write something in Rust for a while, but it was never the right time, and I also didn't have the correct project. Luckily for me, it's a small project, so I decided to use it to learn some Rust.
Obviously I haven't used it for long (or for much), but I've really enjoyed using the language. And especially for these types of tools, I can see myself using Rust even more in the future. (Especially because I have my Neovim config working perfectly with Rust now.)