James A. A. Joyce's Journal: Comment posting POST data

I'm just documenting some of my thought processes regarding noninteractive comment posting, which may help me to build an automated post poster out of bash.

When posting a comment AC (which is what my planned script will do for convenience's sake) one first has to preview the comment and then submit it: they're both exactly the same operations except that for one the POST variable "op" is set to "Preview" and for the other it's "Submit". So we can just post the same variables twice.

Except...there's the formkeys. We have to generate formkeys somehow. Actually, that's quite simple. We just simulate the clicking of a Reply link and we get a valid comment submit form with a valid formkey. We fill it in, hit Preview, then get a new form with another formkey. Use that, fill it in, submit, done.

Oh, and then, there's the waiting for a smidge under 20 seconds for the lameness filter.

OK, the rest of this journal entry is going to be another experimental bash shell script:

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#!/bin/bash

show_usage=0

if echo "$1" | egrep -q '^[0-9]+$'
then
    sid="$1"
    echo "Notice: sid=\"$1\""
    show_usage=$[$show_usage+1]
fi

if [ "$2" != "" ]
then
    postersubj=$2
    echo "Notice: postersubj=\"$2\""
    show_usage=$[$show_usage+1]
fi

#if [ "$3" != "" ]
#then
#    postercomment=$3
#    echo "Notice: postercomment=\"$3\""
#    show_usage=$[$show_usage+1]
#fi

if echo "$3" | egrep -q '^[1234]$'
then
    posttype=$3
    echo "Notice: posttype=\"$3\""
else
    echo "Notice: posttype=1"
fi

if echo "$4" | egrep -q '^[0-9]+$'
then
    pid=$4
else
    pid=0
fi

startat=$5

echo "SHOWUSAGE $show_usage"
if [ "$show_usage" -lt "2" ]
then
    echo "$0: usage $0 sid postersubj \"[posttype]\" \"[pid]\" \"[startat]\"" >&2
    echo "optional arguments are in square brackets" >&2
    exit 1
fi

postercomment=$(cat -)
echo "Notice: comment text read" >&2

#pid=0
#postersubj="fp bitchez VICTORY IS MINE ahahah"
#postercomment="testing using the kickass w3c fp tool from www.w3.org ($RANDOM)"
#posttype=1
op=Submit

function submit_comment_form()
{
    formkey=$(curl "http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=$sid&cid=0&pid=$sid&startat=$startat&threshold=0&mode=thread&commentsort=0&op=Reply" 2> /dev/null | grep 'NAME="formkey" VALUE=".*">' | sed 's/<INPUT TYPE="HIDDEN" NAME="formkey" VALUE="//g' | sed 's/">//g')
    echo "Notice: form submission formkey: $formkey" >&2
    echo "Notice: waiting 18 seconds for 20 second timer to run out" >&2
    sleep 18

    if w3c -post "http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=$sid&cid=0&pid=$pid&startat=$startat&threshold=$threshold&mode=$mode&commentsort=$commentsort&op=Submit" \
        -form \
        'commentsort=0' \
        "formkey=$formkey" \
        'mode=thread' \
        "op=$op" \
        "pid=$pid" \
        "postercomment=$postercomment" \
        "postersubj=$postersubj" \
        "posttype=$posttype" \
        "sid=$sid" \
        "startat=$startat" \
        'threshold=0'
        | grep -io 'Comment Submitted.'
    then
        echo "Notice: comment posted successfully."
    else
        echo "Error: comment not posted."
    fi
}

submit_comment_form
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