Do you have a lot of players in your roleplaying community? That's awesome! However, when it's time to check their activity, searching blog for blog, it must be kinda overwhelming. I know, I've been there, and some of my friends are currently there. They have a Google Sheet file that they all collaborate and use as a control of all the active blogs and the faceclaims reservations they might have. They asked me to code them a solution that could help them fastly check the activity of all the blogs simultaneously.
In THIS LINK or in the source you'll find my code in Python that helps you automatically check the activities of all the blogs you have control in your Google Sheets file. The process is kinda boring, and you still must keep updating your Google Sheets, but hey. Maybe it's better to make a small update to a list whenever a blog joins in than it is to manually check all blogs every week.
Please do tell me if you think this is useful, and contact me if you have any questions!
So... What are these pastebin files?
config.json: this is where you'll adapt the code with the names for your Google Sheet file and your column names.
README.md: a markdown file with all the explanations you need. I'll copy them down below.
Tumblr Activity Verifier: the Python code that does all the magic.
You must download all of those three and put them in the same folder for the to function, together with the Tumblr API key JSON and the Google Sheets authentication JSON.
Wait, what? So how do I use it?
So, the explanation below will also be in the README.md file.
This was made with Python 3.11.0. You can download it here.
The libraries I used are: gspread, json, pandas, oauth2client, requests. After installing Python, you can install them by typing pip install <library name> in your console. To open your console, type cmd in your Windows search bar.
You must have a Tumblr account and a Tumblr API key. You can get one here. When I registered my application I put the following information:
Application Name: Tumblr Activity Verifier
Application Website: <your Google Sheet link>
Application Description: My application will use the Tumblr API check the activity of the blogs in my roleplaying community.
Default Callback URL: https://<your roleplay blog handle>.tumblr.com
OAuth2 redirect URLs: https://<your roleplay blog handle>.tumblr.com
Create a JSON file named tumblr_secret.json and put your API key there. Your JSON must contain: { "api_key": `<your api key>` }
You must have a Google account and a Google API key. I followed this tutorial. You must only look at the three first topics: Authentication, Enable API Access for a Project and For Bots: Using Service Account.
Create a Google Sheet and share it with your Google API email. This code uses a sheet which is located in the default Google Drive folder.
Download your google credential file and put it in the same directory as this script. Rename it to tumblr-api-checker.json. The credential will look like this:
Your Google Sheet must have the following columns for this to work:
IC (string): the URL handle of all the blogs you want to check;
OOC (string): the URL handle of all the players you may want to contact;
Reservation (datetime dd/mm/yyyy hh:mm:ss): date and time of current reservations;
Acceptance (datetime dd/mm/yyyy hh:mm:ss): date and time of the blog acceptance within the community.
If your Google Sheet have different names, that is OK. You just need to change them in the config.json file.
The config.json file must look like this:
{ "sheet_name": "<your sheet name>",
"blog_list": "<your ic column name>",
"ooc_list": "<your ooc column name>",
"reservation_date": "<the reservation deadline>",
"acceptance_date": "<the date which the blog was accepted>",
"number_of_interactions": "<the minimum number of interactions for a blog to be considered active. default is 5>",
"number_of_days": "<the number of days which activity will be checked. default is 7>" }
You may have more columns on your sheet, but these are the ones that will be used. You may rename them for anything you want, but you must change the code accordingly.
Run the script. If you're using Windows, you can double click the main.py file. Other option it is to run it in your console by typing python main.py in the same folder that you downloaded the file. You can assure it's in the same folder if you click on the folder with the right mouse button and click on Open in Terminal.
The code will return:
If there are any outdated reservations;
The blogs that were recently accepted and therefore not considered for the Acitivity Check;
A warning if there are any blogs that posted exactly the number of posts or one more than the minimum number of interactions. They may be worth checking manually since they could be posting just a starter call, and therefore not elegible for the Activity Check.
My final considerations
This only works in PC, in Windows and Linux. I don't know if it works in Mac, but it's supposed to.
This only works for blogs that are not dashboard only, since the Tumblr API considers them private blogs. However, the code alerts you at the end for any blogs you may need to check manually.
The code does not consider asks. It only considers posts and reblogs that the players do with the following list. This is a possibility for the future.
Yes, I know it's complicated the Google Drive interaction. I did it because it is where my friends update their control sheet (and also wanted to learn how to do it). I may do a version that only uses the Tumblr API in the future, or with a .CSV or .XLSX local file.
You may contact me in my Tumblr or in my Twitter if you have any questions.
