complete overhaul of the bot

.archive/README.md

@@ -0,0 +1,48 @@
+# @quotesbot
+
+This is the code that posts to https://bots.fyrfli.social/@quotesbot.
+
+## Requirements:
+- some knowledge of the linux command line
+- python installed
+- a Mastodon-compatible API token for your instance
+- a json-formatted file of quotes to use formatted thus:
+    ```
+    [
+        {
+            "quote": "quote",
+            "author": "author"
+        },
+        ...
+        {
+            "quote": "quote",
+            "author": "author"
+        }
+    ]
+    ```
+Your quotes file can either be in the local directory or accessible at a url.
+
+## To install:
+
+- Download the release package
+- Extract into your chosen directory:
+    - `mkdir quotesbot && cd quotesbot`
+    - `tar xfz | gunzip source.[zip|tar.gz]`
+- If you have other projects, you can create a virtual environment to run this code:
+    - `python3 -m venv .venv` 
+    - `source .venv/bin/activate`
+    - `python3 -m pip install -r requirements.txt`
+- Otherwise, just install from the requirements.txt: `python3 -m pip install -r requirements.txt`
+- Copy the env.example to .env and change the values to your own
+
+## To use:
+- You can either run the code without any arguments: `python3 random_quotes.py` or you can pass **one** argument through to the code to select a specific quote to post:
+    - `python3 random_quotes.py 1`
+
+## Caveats
+This is code is *very* rudimentary. It serves a specific purpose:
+- To post my favourite quotes to my timeline every few hours
+- To practice my python coding skills
+
+## Going forward
+It is possible that I may continue to work on this to a point where it's a more sophisticated module, but I can almost guarantee that there are packages out there that do this and more with far more finesse.