dryrun mode ?

[danc]

I plan to implement a dryrun option in order to test without posting, mainly to fill post.txt database with old articles without posting them to Diaspora.
Or maybe there is another way to achieve this ?

[ghost]

Dry run mode should not post on D* neither fill the posts.txt in my opinion, the goal being just simulating sending a post. It's misleading to call an option --dry-run if it actually modifies your data, in this case your posts.txt .

[danc]

Ok, I understand your concern.
How do you manage the initial step, when you want to feed Diaspora without publishing all the RSS feed history ?

[ghost]

First time I was switching from by-hand to using feedDiasp so I guess it was not really an issue. But we could definitly use an option like "--populate-db" or something to create the posts.txt with the last entries in the RSS without actually posting them on D*. Guess it could be useful while launching new instance of feedDiasp.

[danc]

I agree the option should be more explicit.
So we would need two options :
--populate-db (default True)
--post-items (default True)

to explicitly distinguish and control the behaviour.
Dryrun mode would correspond to the two options to False,
--populate-db=False, --post-items=False
while my use case would correspond to
--populate-db=True, --post-items=False

Thanks for the feedback, does everybody agree ?

[ghost]

if --populate-db=True and --post-items=True, you get the normal behaviour don't you? So what's the use case for --post-items=True? I'm not sure to use a --populate-db=False and --post-items=True

It's clear to me that --populate-db should not post rss entries but I'm not sure to ever use the --post-items=True if --populate-db option by itself does not post itself on D*.

I' think the two following options are interesting:

• --dry-run : does not feed the db, does not post entries to D*, display some information for each post (maybe the title?)
• --populate-db[=X] : feed the db with the last X entries of the rss feed, defaults to all current entries of the rss feed

[Debakel]

@chaica --populate-db=False with --post-items=Truecould be used to finally publish items which are already the database, but without fetching new entries.

Then --list-unpublished-posts could show the titles of unpublished posts in the database.

[ghost]

Still a great idea to me :)

[danc]

sorry, subject still interesting, but no time to work on it properly. thanks for the feedbacks