Seance

relay content from Medium to Ghost [WIP]

Note: This app is still work in progress!

installation

To install, run the following commands:

cd seance
yarn install
yarn link

The seance command should now be available in your path. If not, check permissions or run node ./index.js directly.

usage

The main point of this tool is to easily pull Medium posts and add them to a Ghost site, so that you can (for example) cross-post your content between Medium and Ghost.

This project is created for the Snipette website, and as such might have some Snipette-specific features. However, you're free to use it as you like, and any contributions are welcome!

Config

Seance relies on some environment variables to work. You can either set these globally, or place them in a file named .env in the same directory where you are running Seance.

The parameters are for a WebDAV server, where Seance uploads media files, and for your Ghost API interface. The parameters to set are:

• WEBDAV_SERVER_URL - location of your WebDAV server
• WEBDAV_USERNAME - username for signing in
• WEBDAV_PASSWORD - password, likewise
• WEBDAV_PATH_PREFIX - prefix to add to all WebDAV paths: no uploads will happen outside of this path
• UPLOADED_PATH_PREFIX - path where uploaded images will be served (it could end up being different from WEBDAV_SERVER_URL: say you go to https://myhost.com:1234/dav/[folder] to upload, but the public sees it as https://media.mysite.com/[folder]—or, more significantly, when you're doing a local-directory upload!
• LOCAL_UPLOAD_PATH_PREFIX - path where uploaded images will be copied locally, if you choose not to use WebDAV
• GHOST_URL - URL of your Ghost installation
• GHOST_VERSION - 'v2' or 'v3' depending on which version you're using
• GHOST_ADMIN_KEY - 'Admi API key for Ghost'
• BASE_PATH - Subdomain to serve the website on (eg. /seance). Default: /. If you're not planning to use the Seance server, then you can safely ignore this option.

In case you're wondering about the WebDAV server: that's the setup we use at Snipette. We'd like to eventually let you upload directly through Ghost as well, but we're prioritising our setup first to get running before we think of anything else.

Now, we've got a "local upload" option as well which basically copies the file to a specified directory on the system. Pull requests for anything else are welcome!

Pull a post from Medium

# replace the URL with an actual Medium post
seance fetch https://medium.com/@username/some-post-abc123

This will create a new folder in ./content containing:

• the post as a markdown file
• image files for each post (linked appropriately)
• a JSON file with post metadata

Push a post to Ghost

# replace some-post with name of post directory
# seance will look in ./content/[name of post]
seance push some-post

This will upload images to the specified WebDAV URL, and add the post as a draft to Ghost. It will also try to auto-detect the author, and set that if there's a match at the other end.

Copy a Medium post directly to Ghost

# replace the URL with an actual Medium post
seance import https://medium.com/@username/some-post-abc123

This is basically the other two commands combined, or will be once it's implemented. Coming soon!

Import a Medium user to Ghost

# Replace username and email with appropriate values
# The username should match an existing Medium user
seance create-user username user@example.com

This will output a JSON object. Copy-paste that object into a new file (eg. ghost-import.json), then open your Ghost Admin and import the file via the "Labs" section. This is required becaues Ghost doesn't let you directly add users; it only lets you import them.

Seance also attempts to fetch the Medium user's profile image and upload it via WebDAV. The JSON file will link to the WebDAV-uploaded image.

Run the Seance Server

The server is mainly needed when Seance'ing draft Medium posts, because Medium doesn't let you access those anonymously so you need to resort to bookmarklets instead. But it also comes in handy as a nicer, friendlier interface for sending out posts for those who don't want to use the command-line. The engine is more or less the same; it's just the interface that's different!

credits

• Medium import/export is inspired by and depends on a modified version of the mediumexporter library cum cli tool
• Image upload inspired by ghost-webdav-storage-adapter, or will be, once it's implemented

contributing

We're developing this software internally for Snipette, but, if you find our tool useful and think you can improve it, we'd be happy to have your contributions! Just start an issue or open a pull request :)

license

This code is released under the MIT license. See the LICENSE file for details.