Pants

A simple webapp written with Rocket for saving anything to Pocket. It's a lil Pocket Rocket hehehehehehehehh 🚀🚀🚀.

Setup

Get Pocket access token

First, make an app here: https://getpocket.com/developer/apps/new. It should give you a consumer key once you do this.

Now, to get a code for your Pocket user specifically, do this. Pretend our consumer key is 87796-6bf78d700933260a0f9b1b97.

curl -d "consumer_key=87796-6bf78d700933260a0f9b1b97&redirect_uri=https://google.com" -X POST https://getpocket.com/v3/oauth/request

You should see a response like this:

code=07f3123f-0a12-d2f6-07e8-abcdef

Now you can authorize your app for your Pocket by visting this link:

https://getpocket.com/auth/authorize?request_token=07f3123f-0a12-d2f6-07e8-abcdef&redirect_uri=https://www.google.com

Now finally get the authorization token:

curl https://getpocket.com/v3/oauth/authorize -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" -H "X-Accept: application/json" -d "{\"consumer_key\":\"87796-6b548d766433260a0f9b1b97\",\"code\":\"07f3123f-0a12-d2f6-07e8-abcdef\"}"

The response should look like this:

{"access_token":"d44c7cc9-2434-de18-332c-923ad5","username":"danielporteous1@gmail.com"}

This is the token you need to set for the PANTS_ACCESS_TOKEN env var below

Running

# Ideally this maps to something exposed to the web, so the URLs will be valid, but I don't think Pocket really cares.
mkdir /var/pages
cp -r static /var/static

# Set required environment variables
export PANTS_PAGES_ROOT="/var/pages"  # Relative paths work too.
export PANTS_SITE="https://example.com"
export PANTS_CONSUMER_KEY="87796-6b548d766433260a0f9b1b97\"
export PANTS_ACCESS_TOKEN="d44c7cc9-2434-de18-332c-923ad5"
export PANTS_STATIC_ROOT="/var/static"

# Set other Rocket variables if you're interested
export ROCKET_PORT=8765
export ROCKET_ADDRESS=0.0.0.0

# Let's go!
cargo run

To publish

# Change the version in Cargo.toml
cargo publish

The problem

I find myself liking Pocket more and more, and I want to start using it to keep track of everything I want to read and have read. Unfortunately, not everything I want to read really fits Pocket's reading model, even if the tracking model is great. It doesn't really make sense to save The Hobbit to Pocket for example since there is no dedicated webpage containing that content.

The solution

You can see in the docs for Pocket's add API that a URL is required, so we need to make one.

Let's say I want to read Big Boi's Bakery, by Big Boi, I can go to Pants and enter the title (and optionally some tags) and then Pants will go and make a webpage under /pages, in this case /pages/bigboisbakery, and then add it to Pocket.