Module: fetch¶
The fetch module starts at your server where you're logged in and searches a hashtag. After it gets all the toots your server knows about, then it starts looking at where they came from. For each server that it finds mentioned, it calls fetch_hashtag_remote(). Each time that it connects to a new server, it fetches every toot that server knows about the hashtag. Then it looks at the servers that are mentioned and adds any new ones to a list of servers to contact.
Public API¶
This code depends on Mastodon.py and uses it to connect to servers that are mentioned. If you know anything about the fediverse, you know that there's more than just Mastodon servers out there. There's Pleroma, Akkoma, and various other ActivityPub-compatible servers. Some are derived from Mastodon and implement the same APIs. Others don't. Some Mastodon servers offer public read APIs, others don't. So servers that allow public read of their APIs will send you the details on their toots. Servers that don't allow public read, or that don't implement a Mastodon-compatible timeline API will be quietly skipped.
Directory Structure¶
Fetch organizes data in a directory based on the date of the event. So if the journaldir is data, the hashtag is monsterdon, and the event_date is 2025-10-19, then the directory structure is data/2025/10/19 and all the files will have the monsterdon hashtag in their name. See the example below:
data
├── 2025
│ └── 10
│ ├── 19
│ │ ├── data-monsterdon-analysis.json
│ │ ├── data-monsterdon-fetch.json
│ │ ├── index.md
│ │ ├── monsterdon-20251019.png
│ │ ├── monsterdon-20251019.txt
│ │ ├── monsterdon-beige.party.json
│ │ ├── monsterdon-bolha.us.json
│ │ ... lots more files, one per server...
│ │ ├── wordcloud-monsterdon-20251019-remove.png
│ │ └── wordcloud-monsterdon-20251019-remove.txt
List of files¶
Every file has the hashtag and the date in its name. If you ran the same analysis on 2 different hashtags on the same day, none of the files would conflict, though they would all be stored in the same directory.
data-monsterdon-analysis.json: Analysis of the results. It contains the contents of all the top posts and a bunch of meta statistics like top poster, busiest server, etc.data-monsterdon-fetch.json: Data about the fetch. Mainly the date it was done, the servers that succeeded and failed, and the gross total (not de-duplicated) of posts we fetched.index.md: The blog post entry. It's copied manually to the blog post directory.monsterdon-20251019.png: The histogram graph of activity generated by graphmonsterdon-20251019.txt: The alt text for the histogram graph generated by graphmonsterdon-[servername].json: The raw content of posts downloaded from serverservername.wordcloud-monsterdon-20251019-remove.png: The wordcloud generated by graphwordcloud-monsterdon-20251019-remove.txt: The alt text for the wordcloud generated by graph
Module for fetching toots for a hashtag.
TimestampEncoder
¶
Bases: JSONEncoder
A convenience function that converts Pandas Timestamp objects to an ISO string
Source code in mastoscore/fetch.py
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check_journaldir(dir_name)
¶
Check if a directory exists and create it if it doesn't.
Parameters:
| Name | Type | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
directory
|
str
|
The name of the directory to check/create. |
required |
Returns:
| Type | Description |
|---|---|
bool
|
True if the directory already existed or was created, False means we tried |
bool
|
to create it and failed. |
Source code in mastoscore/fetch.py
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create_journal_directory(config)
¶
Create a hierarchical directory structure for journal files.
Config Values Used¶
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
| mastoscore:journaldir | Base directory for journal files: typically the hashtag |
| mastoscore:event_year | Year as string (YYYY) |
| mastoscore:event_month | Month as string (MM) |
| mastoscore:event_day | Day as string (DD) |
Parameters:
| Name | Type | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
config
|
ConfigParser
|
A ConfigParser object from the config module |
required |
Returns:
| Type | Description |
|---|---|
str | None
|
Full path to the created directory, or None if creation failed |
Source code in mastoscore/fetch.py
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fetch(config, progress=FetchProgress(), cancel_token=CancelToken())
¶
This is the top-level function that will download toots and store them in a JSON cache. This
function will create a tooter and login to the server named in the cred_file.
Parameters:
| Name | Type | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
config
|
ConfigParser
|
A ConfigParser object from the config module |
required |
progress
|
FetchProgress
|
A thread-safe webapi FetchProgress FetchProgress object |
FetchProgress()
|
- **cancel_token: a thread-safe webapi FetchProgress CancelToken object that the thread will check to determine if it should stop mid-fetch
Config Parameters Used¶
- fetch:max: Max number of toots to pull from a server (default: 2000)
- fetch:overwrite: If True, overwrite files (re-fetch). If False and a file exists for a server, skip it. Default: False
- fetch:parallel_workers: int, how many fetches to run in parallel. Default: 5
- mastoscore:api_base_url: Starting server for our first connection
- mastoscore:cred_file: Implicitly used when we create our Tooter
- mastoscore:debug: Level for debug logging
- mastoscore:hashtag: Hashtag to search for
- mastoscore:timezone: Timezone for any non-UTC times
- mastoscore:journalfile: prefix for journal files.
Returns:
None
Source code in mastoscore/fetch.py
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fetch_hashtag_remote(config, server, progress=FetchProgress(), cancel_token=CancelToken())
¶
Given a uri of a toot, (like from Mastodon.status), create a Tooter for that URI. Connect and fetch the statuses. Return a few fields, but not all.
Parameters:
| Name | Type | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
config
|
ConfigParser
|
A ConfigParser object from the config module |
required |
server
|
str
|
The api_base_url of a server to fetch from |
required |
progress
|
FetchProgress
|
Optional progress tracker for reporting incremental progress |
FetchProgress()
|
cancel_token
|
CancelToken
|
Optional token that can tell us we need to cancel |
CancelToken()
|
Config Parameters Used¶
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
| fetch:max | Max number of toots to pull from a server (default: 2000) |
| mastoscore:hashtag | Hashtag to search for |
Returns:
| Type | Description |
|---|---|
list | None
|
List of statuses in the raw JSON format from the API. Fields are not |
list | None
|
normalised or converted in any way. Since not all ActivityPub servers |
list | None
|
are exactly the same, it's not even sure which fields you get. |
Source code in mastoscore/fetch.py
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fetch_single_server(config, uri, dir_path, journalfile, overwrite, progress=FetchProgress(), cancel_token=CancelToken())
¶
Fetch toots from a single server (worker function for parallel execution). Assumes the journal directory already exists.
Returns:
| Name | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
tuple |
tuple
|
(uri, toots_list, new_server_uris) or (uri, None, None) on failure |
Source code in mastoscore/fetch.py
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read_json(config, filename)
¶
Given a config and a filename (a fragment, like 'analysis'), figure out the path to the right JSON file. Read the file, if it exists, and return its contents in a dict.
Parameters:
| Name | Type | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
config
|
ConfigParser
|
A ConfigParser object from the config module |
required |
filename
|
str
|
The JSON file name to open |
required |
Returns:
| Type | Description |
|---|---|
dict
|
A dictionary of the contents of the file, if it is successful. Return empty |
dict
|
dict if there are problems. |
Source code in mastoscore/fetch.py
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reset_fetch(config)
¶
Delete all fetch data files for a given configuration.
Removes: - All journal files (data-{journalfile}-{server}.json) - Fetch results file (data-{journalfile}-fetch.json)
Parameters:
| Name | Type | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
config
|
ConfigParser
|
A ConfigParser object from the config module |
required |
Config Parameters Used¶
- mastoscore:hashtag: Hashtag to search for
- mastoscore:journalfile: slug for journal files
Returns: dict with: - files_deleted: list of dicts with 'path' and 'size' for each file - count: number of files deleted - total_size: total bytes deleted
Source code in mastoscore/fetch.py
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toots2df(toots, api_base_url)
¶
Take in a list of toots from a tooter object, turn it into a pandas dataframe with a bunch of data normalized.
Args:
- toots: list. A list of toots in the same format as returned by the search_hashtag() API
- api_base_url: string. Expected to include protocol, like https://server.example.com.
Returns:
A Pandas DataFrame that contains all the toots normalised. Normalisation includes:
- Converting date fields like created_at to timezone-aware datetime objects
- Converting integer fields like reblogs_count to integers
- Adding some columns (see below)
- Discarding all but a few columns. So many different systems return different columns, and I'm only
using a few of them. So I just discard everything else. This cuts down on storage and processing time.
Synthetic columns added:¶
server: The server part of api_base_url: server.example.com if the api_base_url is https://server.example.com
userid: The user's name in person@server.example.com format. Note it does not have the leading @ because tagging people is optional.
local: Boolean that is True if the toot comes from the api_base_url server. False otherwise.
source: The server part of the server who owns the toot. I might be talking to server.example.com, but they've sent me a copy of a toot from other.example.social.
Source code in mastoscore/fetch.py
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update_json(config, filename, results)
¶
Given a filename and a dictionary, read the JSON file, merge the provided dictionary into it, then save the final result to the same location.
Parameters:
| Name | Type | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
config
|
ConfigParser
|
A ConfigParser object from the config module |
required |
filename
|
str
|
The JSON file name to write |
required |
results
|
dict
|
A JSON dictionary to write into that file |
required |
Returns:
| Type | Description |
|---|---|
bool
|
True if it is successful, False otherwise |
Source code in mastoscore/fetch.py
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write_journal(config, df, server)
¶
Take dataframe and the url it represents, and calls
pandas.DataFrame.to_json()
to write it to a corresponding json journal file. Writes it to a file in a hierarchical
directory structure: journaldir/year/month/day/journalfile-server.json.
Config Parameters Used¶
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
| mastoscore:journalfile | Journal file template |
Parameters:
| Name | Type | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
config
|
ConfigParser
|
A ConfigParser object from the config module |
required |
df
|
DataFrame
|
A Pandas DataFrame full of toots to write out. |
required |
server
|
str
|
The api_base_url of a server to fetch from |
required |
Returns:
| Type | Description |
|---|---|
bool
|
True if successful, False otherwise |
Source code in mastoscore/fetch.py
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write_json(config, filename, results)
¶
Given a config and a filename (which is a fragment, like 'analysis'), write the dictionary into a JSON file. This will overwrite any existing JSON file of the same name. Use update_json() to update without clobbering the original.
Parameters:
| Name | Type | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
config
|
ConfigParser
|
A ConfigParser object from the config module |
required |
filename
|
str
|
The JSON file name to write |
required |
results
|
dict
|
A JSON dictionary to write into that file |
required |
Returns:
| Type | Description |
|---|---|
bool
|
True if it is successful, False otherwise |
Source code in mastoscore/fetch.py
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