Social post generator

In this tutorial, you’ll use the Writer Framework to build an AI-powered tool for generating social media posts and tags based on the input you provide! The process will take only minutes using a drag-and-drop visual editor to build the user interface and Python for the back-end code. Here’s what the finished project will look like:

Prerequisites

Before starting, ensure you have:

A Writer account: You don’t need an account to use Writer Framework, but you’ll need one to use the AI module. Sign up for a free account here.
Python 3.9.2 or later: Use the installer from python.org.
pip: This command-line application comes with Python and is used for installing Python packages, including those from Writer.
A basic understanding of Python: You should be familiar with the basics of the language.
Your favorite code editor (optional): There’s a code editor built into Writer for writing back-end code, but you can also use Visual Studio Code, Notepad++, Vim, Emacs, or any text editor made for programming if you prefer.

Setting up your project

Create a Writer app and get its API key

First, you’ll need to create a new app within Writer.

Create the app in Writer

Log into Writer. From the Home screen, click on the Build an app button.

The Start building menu will appear, presenting options for the types of apps you can create.Select Framework, located under Developer tools. This will create a brand new app based on Writer Framework.

Copy your app's API key

On the next screen, titled How to deploy an application, you can get the API key for the app by clicking on the Reveal key button, located under the text Authenticate with an API key. Your complete API key will be displayed, and a “copy” button will appear. Click this button to copy the key; you’ll use it in the next step.

Set up your computer and create the app’s project

The next step is to set up the Writer Framework environment on your computer. You’ll do this by creating a directory for the project, installing dependencies, and creating the project for the application using a template.

Open your terminal application

Open your terminal application. On macOS and Linux, this application goes by the name Terminal; on Windows, you can use either Windows PowerShell (which is preferred) or Command Prompt.

Install the dependencies

If you already have the writer and python-dotenv packages installed on your computer, you can skip this step.

Install the writer and python-dotenv packages by entering the following commands in your terminal application:

pip install writer python-dotenv

This command tells pip, the Python package installer, to install two packages:

writer, which provides some command-line commands and enables Python code to interact with Writer and the Writer Framework.
python-dotenv, which makes it easy to manage environment variables by loading them from a .env file. This one is optional for this exercise, but you might find it useful when working on larger projects.

Set the API key environment variable

To pass your API key to the Writer Framework, you need to set an environment variable called WRITER_API_KEY.Select your operating system and terminal application below, then copy and paste the command into your terminal application, replacing [your_api_key] with the API key you copied earlier:

export WRITER_API_KEY=[your_api_key]

The WRITER_API_KEY environment variable will remain defined as long your terminal session is open (that is, until you close your terminal application’s window).

Create the project

Create the project by entering this command into your terminal application:

writer create social-post-generator --template=ai-starter

This command sets up a new project called social-post-generator using a starter template called ai-starter so that you’re not starting “from scratch.”

Build the UI

Now that you’ve created the project, it’s time to define the UI. The Writer Framework’s drag-and-drop capabilities make it easy — even if you haven’t done much UI work before! The project editor is a web application that runs on your computer and enables you to define and edit your app’s user interface. Launch it by typing the following into your terminal application:

writer edit social-post-generator

You’ll see a URL. Control-click it (command-click on macOS) to open it, or copy the URL and paste it into the address bar of a browser window. The browser window will contain the project editor, which will look like this:

You’ll see the following:

The canvas is in the center. It displays the app’s user interface.
The column on the left contains:
- The Core toolkit, which contains all the UI components. You define the user interface by dragging components from the Toolkit and placing them on the canvas.
- The Component tree, which shows the arrangement of the UI components on the canvas. It’s also useful for selecting items on the canvas, especially when it has a lot of UI components.

It’s time to build the UI!

Examine the header

Select the Header component by clicking it — it’s the component at the top, containing the title AI STARTER and a gray area labeled Empty Header.When you click it, you’ll see the properties panel appear on the right side of the page. This lets you view and edit the properties of the selected component.

The selected header and its properties panel

The first property you’ll see in the panel is the Text property, which defines the text that appears as the header’s title. It should contain the value @{my_app.title}. The @{ and } indicate that my_app.title is a variable and that its contents should be the text displayed instead of the literal text “my_app.title”. You’ll set the value of this variable soon.

Clear the Section's default title

Select the Section component by clicking it — it’s just below the Header component and contains the title Section Title and a gray area labeled Empty Section.In the properties panel, clear out the value of the Title property. This will remove the Section’s default title.

The selected section and its properties panel

Add a Text Input component

The user will need a place to enter words or phrases that the app will use as the basis for generating posts and tags.Drag a Text Input component — and note, it’s Text Input, not Text — from the Core toolkit panel on the left (it’s under Input, and you may need to scroll down a little to find it) and into the Section. Sections can act as containers for other components.

You can search for a specific component by using the search bar at the top of the Core toolkit panel.

Select the Text Input component. In the properties panel:

Find the Label property and set its value to Topic for social posts and tags.
(Optional) Feel free to add some placeholder to the Text Input component by setting the value of the Placeholder property with something like Enter words or phrases describing your topic.

Add a Button component

Drag a Button component from the Core toolkit panel (it’s under Other, and you may need to scroll down a little to find it) into the Section, directly below the Text Input. The user will click this button to submit their prompt.Select the Button. In the properties panel:

Set the Text property’s value to Generate posts.
Find the Icon property, and set its value to arrow_forward.

Add a Message component

The process of creating social media posts and tags takes a few moments. In order to reassure the user that the app is working and hasn’t crashed, it will use a Message component to display something reassuring while it’s generating.Drag a Message component from the Core toolkit panel into the Section positioning it immediately below the Button.Select the Message component. In the properties panel:

Scroll down to the Style section and look for the Loading property, which sets the color of the Message component when it’s loading.
Click its CSS button, which will cause a text field to appear below it.
Enter this color value into the text field: #D4FFF2.

Add a new Section

The Section that you were working on is for user input. Let’s add a new Section to hold the output — the social media posts and tags the app will generate.Drag a Section component from the Toolbox panel and place it inside the Section that’s already there, just below the Message component.

That’s right — Sections can contain other Sections!

The new section inside the existing section

Select the Section you just added. In the properties panel:

Find the Title property and clear it its value to remove the Section’s title.
Scroll down to the Style section and look for the Container background property, which sets the Section’s background color.
Click its CSS button, which will cause a text field to appear below it.
Enter this color value into the text field: #F6EFFD.

Add a Tags component

Writer Framework has a number of useful components to make your apps more functional and beautiful. One of these is the Tags component, which can take a list of hashtags (or words, or short phrases) and display them inside colorful “bubbles” to make them stand out. This app will display the social media tags it generates in a Tags component.Drag a Tags component from the Toolbox panel and place it inside the new Section.

Add a Separator

Drag a Separator component from the Toolbox panel and place it inside the new Section, just below the Tags component. This will separate the tags from the posts.

Add a Text component

Finally, drag a Text component from the Toolbox panel and position it below the Separator. This will hold the generated social media posts.

Add the back-end code

With the UI laid out, it’s time to work on the logic behind it. The logic behind the user interface is defined in a file named main.py, which is in your project’s directory. This file was automatically generated; you’ll update the code in it to define the behavior of your app. The simplest way to edit main.py is within the project editor. Click on the “toggle code” button (beside the word Code) near the lower left corner of the project editor page.

Project editor with arrow pointing to toggle code button

A pane with the name Code will appear at the bottom half of the screen, displaying an editor for the the contents of main.py.

Project editor with the code editor displayed

If you’d rather use a code editor instead of coding in the browser, use it to open the main.py file in your project’s directory.

Now follow these steps:

Import libraries and load the Writer Framework API key

You should see the following at the start of the file:

import writer as wf
import writer.ai

Replace that code with the following:

import os
import re
import writer as wf
import writer.ai

# Set the API key
wf.api_key = os.getenv("WRITER_API_KEY")

This code imports the libraries that the application will need and then reads your Writer Framework API key in the WRITER_API_KEY environment variable.

Create a handler to respond to the user's input

When the user presses the app’s Button, the app needs to call a function to generate and display the social media posts and tags. Find these comments in the code…

# Welcome to Writer Framework! 
# This template is a starting point for your AI apps.
# More documentation is available at https://dev.writer.com/framework

…and replace them with the following function:

def generate_and_display_posts_and_tags(state):
    print(f"Here's what the user entered: {state['topic']}")

    # Display message
    state["message"] = "% Generating social media posts and tags for you..."

    # Generate and display social posts
    prompt = f"You are a social media expert. Generate 5 engaging social media posts about {state['topic']}. Include emojis, and put a blank line between each post."
    state["posts"] = writer.ai.complete(prompt)
    print(f"Posts: {state['posts']}")

    # Generate and display hashtags
    prompt = f"You are a social media expert. Generate around 5 hashtags about {state['topic']}, delimited by spaces. For example, #dogs #cats #ducks #elephants #badgers"
    pattern = r"#\w+"
    hashtags = re.findall(pattern, writer.ai.complete(prompt))
    state["tags"] = {item: item for item in hashtags}
    print(f"Tags: {state['tags']}")

    # Hide message
    state["message"] = ""

The % at the start of the string being assigned to state["message"] will be replaced by a “spinning circle” progress indicator graphic in the Message component.The pattern variable in the # Generate and display hashtags section defines a regular expression pattern to search for words that begin with the # character. The r in front of the opening quote specifies that the string is a raw string, which means that the \ character should be treated as a literal backslash and not as the start of an escape character sequence.Note that generate_and_display_posts_and_tags() uses print() functions for debugging purposes, and you can use them to get a better idea of what’s happening in the function. You’ll see their output in both your terminal application and in the project editor’s ‘log’ pane (which will be covered shortly) as you use the social post generator. This output will include:

The topic the user entered
The posts generated by the LLM
The hashtags generated by the LLM

The print() functions don’t affect the operation of the social post generator in any way, and you can remove them if you wish.

Initialize the application

The final step is to set the application’s initial state. Find this code, which should be just after the generate_and_display_posts_and_tags() function…

# Initialise the state
wf.init_state({
    "my_app": {
        "title": "AI STARTER"
    },
})

…and replace it with this:

# Initialize the state
wf.init_state({
    "topic": "writing",
    "message": "",
    "tags": {},
    "posts": "",
    "my_app": {
        "title": "SOCIAL POST GENERATOR"
    }
})

The Writer Framework’s init_state() method sets the initial value of state, a dictionary containing values that define the state of the application. The key-value pairs in state are how you store values used by your app and how you pass data between the back-end code and the UI.The code above sets the initial value of state so that it has these key-value pairs:

topic: A string containing the topic that the application should generate social media posts and tags for. You’ll bind its value to the Text Input component where the user will enter the topic.
message: A string containing text of the message that will be displayed to the user while the application is generating posts and tags. You’ll bind its value to the Message component.
tags: A list containing the hashtags generated by the LLM. You’ll bind its value to the Tags component.
posts: A string containing the social media posts generated by the LLM. You’ll bind its value to the Text component.
my_app: A dictionary containing values that define the application’s appearance. This dictionary has a single key-value pair, title, which defines the text that appears as the application’s title.

For more details about the state variable, see our Application state page.

Save the updated code and hide the code editor

That’s all the code. If you edited the code in the browser, save it by clicking the “save” button near the top right corner of the code editor.

Project editor and code editor, with arrow pointing to save button

Click the “toggle code” button to hide the code editor.

Bind the UI to the back-end code

You’ve built the UI and written the code behind it. Let’s connect the two! Go back to the browser window with the project editor and do the following:

Observe that the heading at the top of the app is now 'SOCIAL POST GENERATOR'

Earlier, you saw that the Header component’s Text property was set to @{my_app.title}, a value in the app’s state variable. You changed this value when you update the call to the Writer Framework’s init_state() method.

Bind the Text Input component to the 'state' variable's 'topic' key

Select the Text Input component. In the properties panel, scroll down to the Binding section and find the State element property. This is where you specify the state variable key whose value will be connected to the Text Input component. Set its value to topic.

Updating the text input component's state element property

Connect the Button component to the 'generate_and_display_posts_and_tags()' function

Select the Button component. In the properties panel, scroll down to the Events section and find the wf-click property. This is where you specify the function to call when the user clicks the button — set its value to generate_and_display_posts_and_tags.

Bind the Message component to the 'state' variable's 'message' key

Select the Message component. In the properties panel, find the Message property, which specifies the content of the Message component. Set its value to @{message}.

Bind the Tags component to the 'state' variable's 'tags' key.

Select the Tags component. In the properties panel:

Find the Tags property, which specifies the source of the tags that the component will display.
Click its JSON button.
In the text field below the JSON button, set the Tags property’s value to @{tags}.

Bind the Text component to the 'state' variable's 'posts' key

Select the Text component. In the properties panel:

Find the Text property, which specifies the content of the Text component. Set its value to @{posts}.
Set the Use Markdown property to yes.

Set the visiblity of the Section component containing the Tags and Text components based on the 'state' variable's 'posts' key

Select the Section component containing the Tags and Text components. In the properties panel:

Scroll to the Visibility property at the bottom.
Click on the Custom button.
In the Visibility value field, set the value to posts. This will cause the Section to be visible only when the state variable’s posts key has a non-empty value.

Test the application

You’ve completed all the steps to make a working social post generator, and you can try using it right now, even while editing the user interface! Enter a topic into the Topic for social posts and tags text field, then click the Generate Posts button* twice — the first time will cause the properties panel to appear, and the second click will register as a click. You’ll know that you’ve clicked the button when you see the Message component display the text “Generating social media posts and tags for you…”

Waiting for the generator to finish while the message component displays its message

…and soon after that, you should see some results:

To get a better sense of what the experience will be like for the user, switch to the preview by changing the edit mode (located near the upper left corner of the page) from UI mode to Preview mode by selecting the Preview option:

The project editor with an arrow pointing to the Preview button

Here’s what the app looks like in Preview mode:

The working social post generator, with the project editor in "Preview" mode

You can see the output of any print() functions and error messages by clicking on the Log button located near the upper right corner of the page:

The social post generator with an arrow pointing to the Log button

Here’s what the app looks like when displaying the log:

The social post generator, with the log pane displayed

It’s very helpful to be able to test the application while editing it. As you continue to work with Writer Framework, you’ll find yourself alternating between making changes to your application and testing those changes without having to leave the project editor.

Run the application locally

Once you’ve tested the application, it’s time to run it locally. Switch back to your terminal application. Stop the editor with ctrl-c, then run the application by entering the following command:

writer run social-post-generator

Note that the command starts with writer run as opposed to writer edit. This launches the application as your users will see it, without any of the editing tools. Even though you can preview your applications in the project editor, it’s still a good idea to test it by running it on your computer, outside the project editor, before deploying it. You’ll be able to access the application with your browser at the URL that appears on the command line. It should look like this:

The Writer editor, which you launched with writer edit social-post-generator, and your application, which you launched with writer run social-post-generator, run on the same URL, but on different ports (specified by the number after the : character at the end of the URL).

Conclusion

That’s it — you’ve built a functional social post generator using the Writer Framework! Feel free to modify this project! The Writer platform is flexible enough for you to customize, extend, and evolve your application into something completely different! To find out what else you can do, check out the documentation for Writer Framework and the Writer API.

Getting started

Guides

Tutorials

Advanced

Component reference

Prerequisites

Setting up your project

Create a Writer app and get its API key

Set up your computer and create the app’s project

Build the UI

Add the back-end code

Bind the UI to the back-end code

Test the application

Run the application locally

Conclusion

Getting started

Guides

Tutorials

Advanced

Component reference

​Prerequisites

​Setting up your project

​Create a Writer app and get its API key

​Set up your computer and create the app’s project

​Build the UI

​Add the back-end code

​Bind the UI to the back-end code

​Test the application

​Run the application locally

​Conclusion

Prerequisites

Setting up your project

Create a Writer app and get its API key

Set up your computer and create the app’s project

Build the UI

Add the back-end code

Bind the UI to the back-end code

Test the application

Run the application locally

Conclusion