#+title: checking for toots
#+rss_title: checking for toots

The mastodon cli client ~toot~ is pretty nice for tootin'. If I want to post something I can just ~toot post "some really unique thought"~ and BAM it's out there on the internet forever. It even supports media -- EG ~echo 'can I pipe stuff into toot?' | toot post -m $(shot)~ and I can put adhoc screenshots in there:

{{{image(toot.png)}}}

This is all well and good, but then I'm blind to when replies to toots happen (and with FOMO, I end up checking more often than I have too). Luckily, the toot cli client has a way to check for notifications. Unluckily, the toot nofications don't come through in a very structured way, and there's no way to get "unseen" notifications, it just sends everything (or well, some last N notifications):

#+begin_src
$ toot notifications
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
 @friend@linuxrocks.online mentioned you in
@friend@linuxrocks.online                                                           2020-04-28 16:22

@neeasade
Hidden windows as in minimized? I thought, bspwm doesn't have that...?

ID 104077129364588593  ↲ In reply to 104076791236950072
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
⁉️ Lazr ⁉️ @lazr@mstdn.io reblogged your status
kitten mittens @neeasade                                                            2020-04-28 14:56

bspwm breaks a little on with lots of hidden windows (see the smooshed boi in the gap)

Media:
https://mastodon.social/media/H7EiE9_nJzLtHDbPRxs

ID 104076791236950072
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
hazel :blobcatcomfy: @hazel@is.nota.live now follows you
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
...
#+end_src

Note: There is the ability to clear all notifications, but then you also lose upstream history -- I'd like to preserve that.

** [[#h-dfa7f639-4dfe-45a8-af1a-1ba6563fcc28][Rolling my own]]
:PROPERTIES:
:CUSTOM_ID: h-dfa7f639-4dfe-45a8-af1a-1ba6563fcc28
:END:

Alright, I need 2 things -- a way to mark the current set of notifications as 'seen' and a way to check the content of 'unseen' notifications (I only care if mentions happen, not necessarily boots or favs). I need to delimit based on that weird separator.. at first I reached for grep and sed, but they don't quite handle multiline iteration that well -- awk has me covered though! After some searching I stumble upon the internal RS (record separator) variable. Since the value it takes is a regex, I can do the following to map over toots:

#+begin_src bash
toot notifications | awk 'BEGIN { RS="\n─+\n" }; {print $0}'
#+end_src

And with diff, I can check if anything has changed (provided I save the seen notifications output somewhere). First I isolate to just the new content, and then I count how many of the new notifications contain "mentioned you" (I only have FOMO about conversation):

#+begin_src bash
#!/usr/bin/env bash
# to save the 'seen' state (will mapped to a click on the panel):
# toot notifications >/tmp/toot-notifications.txt

count=0
if ! diff=$(diff <(toot notifications) <(cat /tmp/toot-notifications)); then
    new_content=$(echo "$diff" | grep '^<' | sed 's/< //')
    count=$(echo "$new_content" | awk 'BEGIN { RS="\n─+\n" }; /mentioned you/{print "mentioned"}' | wc -l)
fi

echo "toot mentions: $count"
#+end_src

From there it's a short trip to have a panel button, you just call the script!

{{{image(toot_panel.png)}}}

With a click action to "Mark toots as seen"(just updating the temp file) and open up mastodon, I'm all set for some distration free tootin' without the FOMO of mentions.