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So, like all good things, the idea for this post comes from a tweet...

Do you have your own Gatsby site? Let's brainstorm a dev.to cross-poster

So, like all good things, the idea for this post comes from a tweet...

Note: I updated some names and links in this post. Dev.to's product became Forem when it went open source

So, like all good things, the idea for this post comes from a tweet:

This is something I've been ruminating on for a bit. I've even tried to build it - a few times! I keep starting in on the work and getting lost in the millions of directions I could take it.

Here's what I'd like: When I publish a new post to my gatsby site (you're on it now!), I'd like for that post to appear on dev.to automatically.

It should:

  • recreate my post verbatim, from its original markdown source
  • use the canonical_url frontmatter field to make sure I retain SEO goodness on my post
  • happen without my intervention
  • be agnostic of where my posts are coming from. At the time of writing this article, I use takeshape.io as a headless CMS for my site, so my individual posts aren't in source control
  • only take posts from my master branch, since I use feature branches for draft posts from time to time
  • use the dev.to API (update: now called the Forem API), of course

Nice to have:

  • maybe posts should be set to published: false at first, so I can preview/review/update them as needed for dev.to?

Possible approaches for this:

  1. Tap into GitHub's webhooks somehow, and fire off a post here
  2. Come from a job kicked off after CI, maybe? I use CircleCI, but would like this feature to be fairly implementation agnostic.
  3. Use a GitHub App?
  4. ...or a GitHub Action?
  5. Perhaps just a lamba function deployed to AWS or Netlify Functions.

So - here's where I ask for your help. Surely there's a simple approach here I haven't thought of, or maybe it's a matter of collecting a few scenarios and building something based on 80/20.

What else am I missing here? I'd love your help. What use cases would you have for a cross-poster from your gatsby site? How would you implement it? How can we help each other?

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