flipton

An automatic instance switcher wrapping Mastodon queries with Mastodon.py.

As mastodon works as a federated network of instances, information on a specific user (e.g. on their followers) may be incomplete at a specific instance, which isn't their home instance. In order to obtain the most complete information (and perhaps reduce your quota usage on individual instances), flipton automatically sends requests to the respective home instances of the specified user.

Setup

git clone https://github.com/kokodokodo/flipton <FLIPTON_DIR>

Add <FLIPTON_DIR> to your PYTHONPATH.

Usage

In your project, do something like this:

from flipton import MastodonInstanceSwitcher
mst = MastodonInstanceSwitcher()

# Your Mastodon.py code

For requests, which do not require a logged-in user, you can use the MastodonInstanceSwitcher object just like you would use a Mastodon object from Mastodon.py. However, instead of using user-ids, as you would for Mastodon.py, in flipton you should specifiy either the instance's hostname (e.g. mastodon.social) or the user's account name (username@hostname). This information allows flipton to address the request to the respective instance.

That means, instead of calling mst.instance_activity() (as you would for the instance-specific Mastodon-object) you'd call mst.instance_activity("mastodon.social") and instead of mst.account_followers(user_id) you'd call mst.account_followers("username@hostname").