Important update: Mastodon now provides a UI for all of this. Just go to your settings and under the "developer" menu there is a place to create a new app and get your credentials all in one go. I am leaving this up here for people on old versions of Mastodon.
Hi! Unlike Twitter, Mastodon doesn't provide a simple UI for registering applications. So I made one. This assumes you have curl installed locally. You don't need to know how to USE curl but you should have it installed so you can run the very last step of the process.
This will work for any of the various Mastodon instances out there.
Step 1: Get client id/secret
Fill out the form below with your info, MAKE SURE YOU ARE LOGGED IN AS THE BOT, and then this will step you through the process of getting an access token. Keep the access token in a safe place (treat it like a password) and use a nice API client to post as the bot!
Your Client Data:
(submit the above first)
Step 2: Get the temporary oauth verification code
Just click on this link to open a new tab asking the server for a token. It will ask you to authorize (again, this is the account you're signed into in your browser).
When you get the code (it should be a long string of numbers and letters), copy and paste it here and submit:
SAVE THAT ACCESS CODE. That is the thing you'll need to get your bot up and running.
You can verify this whole process worked by going to this page and checking that your app is in the list. If it's in there.... it worked, good job!!!!! If not, I'm sorry: welcome to OAuth2 hell.