Post to Lemmy

Reelspan posts to one community on your Lemmy server, as your account. Each post has a title, an optional body, and optionally one image or video, which is uploaded to the server's image host and linked from the post.

What you can post

The title is lemmy_title, else the first line of the caption (up to 200 characters), else "Untitled". The body is lemmy_description, else description, else the caption when it says more than the title.

The result's url is the post on your server (https://lemmy.world/post/123), and post_id its id.

Connect a community

You need an account on the server that may post in the community. Setup takes about a minute.

1. Use an account on your Lemmy server that may post in the community.
2. In the Reelspan dashboard, open Accounts → Connect account, choose the profile and Lemmy.
3. Enter the server (lemmy.world), the community, and the account's username and password.

The community is its name as in lemmy.world/c/technology. One on another server is name@server. A !name or a full community link works too.

Reelspan signs in once to get a token and keeps only the token. Your password isn't stored. An account with two-factor sign-in needs it turned off for this.

With the API

curl -X POST https://api.reelspan.com/v1/accounts/lemmy \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $REELSPAN_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"profile_username": "my-brand", "server": "lemmy.world", "community": "technology", "username": "yourname", "password": "..."}'

import { Reelspan } from 'reelspan';

const reelspan = new Reelspan();
await reelspan.accounts.connect('my-brand', 'lemmy', {
  server: 'lemmy.world',
  community: 'technology',
  username: 'yourname',
  password: process.env.LEMMY_PASSWORD,
});

import os
from reelspan import Reelspan

reelspan = Reelspan()
reelspan.accounts.connect(
    "my-brand", "lemmy",
    server="lemmy.world", community="technology", username="yourname", password=os.environ["LEMMY_PASSWORD"],
)

{ "success": true, "platform": "lemmy", "account": "[email protected]", "reconnected": false }

Connecting again replaces the Lemmy account on that profile. See Connect with credentials.

Example post

An image post with a title and a body:

curl -X POST https://api.reelspan.com/v1/posts/photos \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $REELSPAN_API_KEY" \
  -F "user=my-brand" \
  -F "platform[]=lemmy" \
  -F "title=New dashboard" \
  -F "lemmy_title=We rebuilt our dashboard around keyboard shortcuts" \
  -F "lemmy_description=Every action now has a shortcut. Here is what changed and why." \
  -F "photos[][email protected]"

import { Reelspan } from 'reelspan';
import { readFile } from 'node:fs/promises';

const reelspan = new Reelspan();
const post = await reelspan.posts.photos({
  user: 'my-brand',
  platforms: ['lemmy'],
  title: 'New dashboard',
  photos: [{ data: await readFile('photo1.jpg'), name: 'photo1.jpg', type: 'image/jpeg' }],
  extra: {
    lemmy_title: 'We rebuilt our dashboard around keyboard shortcuts',
    lemmy_description: 'Every action now has a shortcut. Here is what changed and why.',
  },
});

from reelspan import Reelspan

reelspan = Reelspan()
post = reelspan.posts.photos(
    "my-brand", ["lemmy"], ["photo1.jpg"], "New dashboard",
    extra={
        "lemmy_title": "We rebuilt our dashboard around keyboard shortcuts",
        "lemmy_description": "Every action now has a shortcut. Here is what changed and why.",
    },
)

Fields

When you send lemmy_title, the caption becomes that title too, so send the body in lemmy_description or description.

In the dashboard composer, the Lemmy tab has an NSFW switch.

Limits and behaviour

• One image or video per post. With several photos, the first is used and the result carries a warning. Videos in photos[] are left out, with a warning.
• Files: up to 100 MB; your server's image host may allow less, or refuse video.
• Token: the token from signing in is kept, encrypted. If the server ends it, posts fail with reauth_required; connect again.
• Your server only: calls go only to the server you named, and never to private network addresses.

Common errors

Errors when connecting come back as a 400 with the code in error_code. Errors when posting are in that network's result. See Errors.