Getting Started

Before we start getting our hands dirty, it’s always best to know that we have all the tools and knowledge required at hand. This saves us a lot of time from searching if anything is required, or finding out something worse, that the project cannot be done at all due to a missing piece.

Below are the tools that are required:

Setting Up the Project

Let’s create a directory called ig-bot. Open your terminal and in the directory and run 

npm init

Creating A Reddit Bot

Now that we have our directory structure set up, let’s create our reddit bot that will act as our Reddit user and get us awesome posts from Reddit.

Prerequisite

Steps to create a Reddit bot

It should look as follows

Once you hit ‘Create App’, a bot will be created and you will be able to see the client secret and client ID

It should look as follows

Head on over tohttps://not-an-aardvark.github.io/reddit-oauth-helper/  and paste the clientID and clientSecret into the respective input fields, like so.

We check the ‘Permanent’ checkbox and select the ‘read’ Scope, as we would like to keep the access indefinitely and we just need to retrieve the posts from Reddit. Click on ‘Generate Tokens’.

Once clicked, it should open a new tab redirecting you to Reddit and asking you to authorize the bot. Click on ‘Allow’. Congratulations, you have just created your Reddit Bot!

Instagram Account

Good job on creating the Reddit bot, now we move onto Instagram. To be honest, there’s not much to do with the Instagram bot. You just need to follow the basic steps to create a new Instagram profile, and have the username and password at hand as they will be required in the upcoming steps.

Ok, Ok this is where the coding starts I Promise

Create a folder called src, in this folder create a new file calledindex.js. This will be our entrypoint to the app, meaning it will be the file that will contain the driver code which handles the rest of the code.

index.js

const dotenv = require("dotenv");
const sharp = require("sharp");
const { findByPostID, insertPostId } = require("./db/db");
const { MongoClient } = require("mongodb");
const fs = require("fs");
const path = require("path");
const {
  downloadFile,
  getTopPostOfOddlySatisfying,
  doStuffWithDownloadedImage,
  initiateSnoo,
  doStuffWithDownloadedVideo,
} = require("./utils/helpers");
const { IgApiClient } = require("instagram-private-api");

const cleanup = (files) => {
  for (const file of files) {
    fs.unlink(path.resolve(__dirname, file), (err) => {
      if (err) throw err;
      console.log("successfully deleted", file);
    });
  }
};

const run = async (postNumber) => {
  dotenv.config();
  const client = new MongoClient(process.env.dbURI);
  const r = initiateSnoo(process);
  const content = await getTopPostOfOddlySatisfying(
    r,
    postNumber,
    postNumber + 1
  );
  const doesPostExist = await findByPostID(client, content.postID);
  if (!doesPostExist) {
    const ig = new IgApiClient();
    ig.state.generateDevice(process.env.IG_USERNAME);
    await ig.account.login(process.env.IG_USERNAME, process.env.IG_PASSWORD);
    try {
      if (content.type === "video") {
        await downloadFile(content.videoLink, "videoToBeUploaded.mp4");
        await downloadFile(content.audioLink, "soundToBeUploaded.mp3");
        await downloadFile(content.thumbnail, "thumbnail.jpg");
        await doStuffWithDownloadedVideo(ig, content);
        cleanup([
          "../thumbnail.jpg",
          "../final.mp4",
          "../videoToBeUploaded.mp4",
          "../soundToBeUploaded.mp3",
        ]);
      } else {
        await downloadFile(content.imageLink, "downloaded.jpeg");
        await doStuffWithDownloadedImage(sharp, ig, content);
        cleanup(["../output.jpg", "../downloaded.jpeg"]);
      }
    } catch (error) {
      console.log("🚀 ~ file: index.js ~ line 45 ~ run ~ error", error);
      await insertPostId(client, content.postID, content.title);
      await client.close();
      return { error: true };
    }
    await insertPostId(client, content.postID, content.title);
    await client.close();
  }
};

let postNumber = new Date(Date.now()).getHours();
run(postNumber);

Create a folder called utils and create two new files in them helpers.js and captions.js

helpers.js

const fs = require("fs");
const https = require("https");
const { readFile } = require("fs");
const { promisify } = require("util");
const ffmpeg = require("fluent-ffmpeg");
const readFileAsync = promisify(readFile);
const snoowrap = require("snoowrap");
const { imageTags, videoTags } = require("./captions");
const path = require("path");
const downloadFile = async (url, fileName) => {
  try {let file = fs.createWriteStream(`./${fileName}`);
    return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
      https.get(url, (response) => {
        response.pipe(file);
        response.on("end", () => {
          resolve();
        });
      });
    });
  } catch (error) {
    console.log(
      "🚀 ~ file: helpers.js ~ line 30 ~ downloadFile ~ error",
      error
    );
  }
};

const getTopPostOfOddlySatisfying = async (r, postNumber, limit) => {
  try {
    const subreddit = await r.getSubreddit("oddlysatisfying");
    const topPost = await subreddit.getTop({ time: "day", limit })[postNumber];
    console.log(
      "🚀 ~ file: helpers.js ~ line 29 ~ getTopPostOfOddlySatisfying ~ topPost",
      JSON.stringify(topPost)
    );

    if (!topPost.is_video && topPost.domain === "i.redd.it") {
      return {
        type: "image",
        title: topPost.title,
        author: topPost.author.name,
        imageLink: topPost.url_overridden_by_dest,
        postID: topPost.id,
      };
    } else if (
      topPost.is_video &&
      !topPost.is_gif &&
      topPost.domain === "v.redd.it"
    ) {
      return {
        type: "video",
        title: topPost.title,
        author: topPost.author.name,
        postID: topPost.id,
        videoLink: topPost.media.reddit_video.fallback_url,
        thumbnail: topPost.thumbnail,
        audioLink: topPost.media.reddit_video.fallback_url.replace(
          /DASH_d+/,
          "DASH_audio"
        ),
      };
    }
  } catch (error) {
    console.log("ERROR", error);
  }
};

const mergeAudioAndVideo = async (audioFile, videoFile, resultFile) => {
  return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
    try {
      let result = ffmpeg(videoFile)
        .addInput(audioFile)
        .size("720x?")
        .aspectRatio("4:5")
        .saveToFile(resultFile)
        .on("end", () => {
          resolve();
        });
    } catch (error) {
      console.log(
        "🚀 ~ file: helpers.js ~ line 70 ~ returnnewPromise ~ error",
        error
      );

      reject(error);
    }
  });
};

const doStuffWithDownloadedVideo = async (ig, content) => {
  await mergeAudioAndVideo(
    "videoToBeUploaded.mp4",
    "soundToBeUploaded.mp3",
    "final.mp4"
  );
  try {
    await ig.publish.video({
      // read the file into a Buffer
      coverImage: await readFileAsync(
        path.resolve(__dirname, "../../thumbnail.jpg")
      ),
      video: await readFileAsync(path.resolve(__dirname, "../../final.mp4")),caption: `${content.title} - Posted on r/oddlySatisfying by ${content.author} ${videoTags}`,
    });

    console.log("Done ig.publish.video ");
  } catch (error) {
    console.log(
      "🚀 ~ file: helpers.js ~ line 107 ~ doStuffWithDownloadedVideo ~ error",
      error
    );
    return {
      error: true,
      message: "Error occured",
    };
  }
};

const doStuffWithDownloadedImage = async (sharp, ig, content) => {
  await sharp("downloaded.jpeg")
    .resize({ width: 1080, height: 1080 })
    .toFormat("jpg")
    .toFile("output.jpg");
  await ig.publish.photo({
    // read the file into a Buffer
    file: await readFileAsync("output.jpg"),caption: `${content.title} - Posted on r/oddlySatisfying by ${content.author} ${imageTags},
  });
};
const initiateSnoo = (process) => {
  try {
    return new snoowrap({
      userAgent: "insta-uploader",
      clientId: process.env.clientId,
      clientSecret: process.env.clientSecret,
      accessToken: process.env.accessToken,
      refreshToken: process.env.refreshToken,
    });
  } catch (error) {
    console.log(
      "🚀 ~ file: helpers.js ~ line 97 ~ initiateSnoo ~ error",
      error
    );
  }
};

module.exports = {
  initiateSnoo,
  downloadFile,
  getTopPostOfOddlySatisfying,
  mergeAudioAndVideo,
  doStuffWithDownloadedImage,
  doStuffWithDownloadedVideo,
};

captions.js

const imageTags = '#satisfaction #satisfying #satisfyingvideos #oddlysatisfying #satisfy  #satisfyingvideo #relax #reddit';

const videoTags = '#satisfaction #satisfying #satisfyingvideos #oddlysatisfying #satisfy';

module.exports = {
  imageTags,
  videoTags,
};

Create a folder called db and create a file in it called db.js. You can learn how to set up a DB here

db.js

const findByPostID = async (client, postId) => {
    try {
      await client.connect();
      const database = client.db("posts");
      const collection = database.collection("postID");
  
      const query = { postId };
  
      const post = await collection.findOne(query);
      console.log("🚀 ~ file: db.js ~ line 10 ~ findByPostID ~ post", post);
      return post;
    } catch (error) {
      console.log("🚀 ~ file: db.js ~ line 30 ~ insertPostId ~ error", error);
    }
  };
  
  const insertPostId = async (client, postId, postName) => {
    try {
      await client.connect();
      const database = client.db("posts");
      const collection = database.collection("postID");
  
      const doc = { postId, name: postName };
  
      const result = await collection.insertOne(doc); console.log(`${result.insertedCount} documents were inserted with the _id: ${result.insertedId}`);
    } catch (error) {
      console.log("🚀 ~ file: db.js ~ line 30 ~ insertPostId ~ error", error);
    }
  };
  
  module.exports = {
    findByPostID,
    insertPostId,
  };
  

Create a .env file in the root directory (where you package.json is).

.env

IG_USERNAME=yourIGBotUsername
IG_PASSWORD=yourIGBotPassword
clientSecret=redditClientSecret
accessToken=accessTokenProvidedBynot-an-aardvark
refreshToken=refreshTokenProvidedBynot-an-aardvark
clientId=redditClientId
dbURI=mongoServerDBURI

node src/index.js