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msync Manual

A low bandwidth store and forward Mastodon api client

Hello! Welcome to the manual for msync, a store and forward command line Mastodon API client. msync is a piece of software with some quirks, but also some (in my opinion) really cool and powerful functionality, so a manual can be a real help. You dont have to read this from top to bottom- feel free to skim the table of contents or ctrl-F for a word or phrase related to what you want to do. Or, feel free to get ahold of me on Mastodon at @BestGirlGrace@my.hypnovir.us.

How to start using msync

Installing

Once you've compiled or downloaded msync (see README.md), you have a few options:

  • leave it where it is and use it in place, or copy it to a folder in your home directory and use it from there.
  • copy the compiled msync executable to somewhere in your $PATH.

Either option works. The only thing to be aware of is that msync will create a msync_accounts folder in the same directory as its executable. For the purposes of this guide, commands will be written msync sync, but anyone using the first option should type ./msync sync from the correct folder instead. If you downloaded a prebuilt release, your executable will be called something like msync-v0.9.1-linux-x64. Feel free to rename it to simply msync or whatever else you like.

Setting up your account

msync isn't very useful until you have an account. To do this, make sure you can access the internet and run:

msync new --account yourusername@instance.egg

This will register msync with your instance and give you a URL to visit in your browser. Go to that URL, log in if needed, click 'authorize', and copy the authorization code it gives you. msync will give you onscreen instructions as to what to do next. Notice that the --account (or -a, for short) switch always goes at the end. Putting it earlier won't work!

Once you see Done! You're ready to start using this account, you're ready to go. Notice that msync has created an msync_accounts directory in the same directory as itself. Keep this somewhere safe, because it now contains a password-equivalent access token! This msync_accounts directory contains everything msync knows: your account name, your settings, anything you've queued but haven't sent, and, once you synchronize with the server, it will contain local copies of your notifications and home timeline. To move, copy, or back up your msync installation to another computer, simply copy that msync_accounts folder.

A note on multiple accounts

If you want to add another account, msync can handle as many accounts as you're willing to throw at it. Run msync new --account anotherusername@some.instance and follow the on-screen instructions for each account you'd like to add. Most of msync's commands only operate on one account at a time, so you'll have to specify an account with the --account or -a switch if you have more than one. Only msync sync and the account-listing part of msync config showall will work without specifying an account.

When running with multiple accounts, you only have to specify the shortest unique prefix of an account to select it. For example, if you have two accounts, SomeCoolGirl@crime.egg and HeyAnotherPerson@illegal.egg, registered with msync, you only have to specify -a s or -a h to choose the account. Note that the search is also case-insensitive. So, to queue a post for the SomeCoolGirl account, use:

msync queue post new_post -a s

And to show all settings for the HeyAnotherPerson account, use:

msync config showall -a h

However, if your accounts were SomeCoolGirl@crime.egg and SomebodyOnce@Toldme.egg, you would have to specify:

msync queue post new_post -a somec

or

msync sync --max-requests 6 -a someb

Note that the -a flag must always go last, after all other flags and arguments.

Note also that msync sync doesn't have to take an --account flag. You can use msync sync with an account to sync only that account, or omit the account flag to sync all your accounts.

To remove an account from msync, simply delete its folder from msync_accounts.

How to use msync

When I say msync is a store and forward client. What this means is that msync lets you queue stuff up while you're not connected to the internet, and then sync up later. msync will only connect to the internet when you run msync new or msync sync. Everything else simply manipulates settings or queues that are kept locally on your machine. msync is for everyone, but it's designed for:

  • Unreliable, slow, or not always-on internet connections.
  • Computers or connections that can't handle the Mastodon web frontend.
  • Systems that run "headless" or otherwise can't use a graphical Mastodon client.
  • Anyone who prefers to use a keyboard.
  • Use in automated scripts.

Reading the home timeline and notifications

After your account is set up, running msync sync --verbose will connect to your instance and, if all is well, start downloading notifications and statuses. The --verbose is optional (and can be shortened to -v), but it will make msync tell you where to find the downloaded timeline and notifications. These will be stored at msync_accounts/[username@instance.url]/home.list and msync_accounts/[username@instance.url]/notifications.list, respectively. There's a lot of ways you can look at these files (in a text editor, IDE or less are common for me, I'll write more about this later), but the important things to know the process are:

  • msync does not care about the contents of these files. It simply appends posts and notifications to them. You can delete these files, edit them, move them elsewhere, msync doesn't care.
  • When you first sync up, msync will get five chunks of statuses or notifications. On subsequent updates, msync will default to downloading until it's "caught up", and has downloaded everything since the last post it saw. To change this behavior, use the --max-requests <integer> option when calling msync sync.
  • Especially when using --max-requests, tell msync whether you want it to get the newest posts first or the oldest by using msync config sync (home|notifications) (newest|oldest|off)
  • If you plan on always syncing every message every time, instead of using --max-requests, I suggest using oldest instead of newest. When syncing oldest-first, msync can write the messages to disk as they come in, letting you see the files update immediately AND not having to store every message in memory until the end.
  • Note that you can also not sync a timeline at all with msync config sync home off
  • If you don't care about a specific type of notification, you can stop msync from retrieving them when you sync with msync config exclude_boosts true, and same for favs, follows, mentions, and polls. msync treats anything start with a t, T, y, or Y as truthy, and everything else as falsy. So exclude_favs true, exclude_favs YES, and exclude_favs Yeehaw are equivalent.
  • I'll write more about configuration later, but for now, you can see all your settings and registered accounts with msync config showall.

Queueing

To do other useful stuff with msync, you'll have to use queues. The msync queue command allows you to queue up favorites, boosts, and posts to be sent when you're back online.

To queue up favorites, run msync queue fav <any number of status IDs>. You can get these status IDs from downloaded posts and notifications. They're always on a line that starts with status id: in home.list and notifications.list- don't put any other ID numbers into this! Boosts are the same: msync queue boost <any number of status ids>

If you accidentally favorited or boosted a toot you'd rather not have, run msync queue --remove fav <any number of status IDs>. This works for favorites and boosts that you haven't sent yet (which will be removed immediately) and for ones that have already been sent (which will be removed the next time you msync sync).

You can check the status of your queues and see what will be sent next time you sync up with msync queue print

If you want to just clear that queue, possibly because there's a typo'd ID in there- you can run msync queue --clear fav (or boost or post).

Posts are a little different. You still queue them up to be sent when you next sync up, but there's an extra step involved. msync queue post <any number of file paths> takes, well, a number of file paths. The contents of these will be interpreted as text files and sent as posts when you msync sync up next. A few notes on posts:

  • Most of the time, I use msync gen to create files that I then fill with my posts. Run msync without any options to see all the switches that msync gen takes- these allow you to set privacy, content warnings, replies, and file attachments and descriptions. When I want to make a post with msync, I do this most of the time:
    msync gen
    vim new_post
    msync queue post new_post
    msync sync

  • msync queue post will copy the files you specify into your msync_accounts folder, so don't feel obligated to keep them around after you queue them.

  • msync does not copy attachments when you queue them. Attachment paths are converted to absolute file paths and uploaded in place when you msync sync up next.

  • The --body option to msync gen can be useful, especially for prefilling someone's handle in the body of a post, but be careful- your shell might do unwanted things with characters like ! and $.

  • If you're replying to someone else's post, make sure you:

    • use the same (or whatever necessary) visibility setting- msync will default to whatever your account's default visibility setting is.
    • include their @ handle in the body
    • include a CW, if needed
    • all in all, my msync command line when generating a reply usually looks like this:
    msync gen --privacy unlisted --reply-to 12345678 --body "@whoever@crime.egg" --cw "contains content"

  • If you'd like to queue up a thread of posts all at once, you can use msync's reply ID feature. It works like this:

    • If you'd like to reply to a post, assign it a reply ID. You can do this by passing the --reply-id <id> option to msync gen. The ID can be any string, but for this to work, you must reproduce it exactly, including any spaces. I like to use first, second, third, and so on.
    • If you'd like a post to be a reply, pass the --reply-to <id> option to msync gen. There are two valid values for reply_to:
      • The status ID of a post that's already been published.
      • The reply_id of a post queued in front of this one.
    • Basically, when you run msync sync, your queued posts are sent as normal. If a post has a reply_id, after it's published, any posts with a reply_to equal to that reply_id will have their reply_to set to the actual published ID of that post. This will persist even if the subsequent post fails to send for some reason.
    • If a post has an invalid reply_to, the remote server won't accept it. You can edit the queued version of the post in msync_accounts/<username@instance.url>/queuedposts and sync again.

A note on UTF-8, Unicode, and Emojis

msync tries its best not to touch the bytes that it sends to or from the server. This means that posts are sent to the server and written to the local timelines as close to as is as possible. Emojis and other non-ASCII characters should work fine, as long as you send and read UTF-8. Some terminal emulators have a hard time displaying UTF-8, and you may wind up having to change some setting or use a different font. I know that running [Console]::OutputEncoding = [Text.UTF8Encoding]::UTF8 can help on Powershell. In addition, characters may show weird on the terminal, but go over the wire fine.

If you want to test whether your terminal renders UTF-8, running msync yeehaw will attempt to print a cowboy emoji (🤠). If it shows up as garbled characters, you'll have to adjust your terminal's encoding settings. It will print the same emoji to msync.log in the current directory so you can test your file viewer of choice as well. I know that Powershell makes you pass the -Encoding utf8 option to commands such as Get-Content.