Well, my bot does it something like this:

print "Connecting to Mastodon...\n";
my $client = Mastodon::Client->new(
    instance        => $config->{server},
    name            => 'TotallyLegitBot',
    client_id       => $config->{key},
    client_secret   => $config->{secret},
    access_token    => $config->{token},
    coerce_entities => 1,
);

print "Posting message...\n";
$client->post_status('Dear Sir! I am prince Bob of Nigeria and i have 
+an offer for you...');
[download]

Hope that helps.

EDIT: For authentication, i went to my Mastodon account to Preferences/Development, clicked on "New Application", filled in application name and clicked submit. Then click the link with that application again and you get key+secret+token that you give your application. There are probably other ways to authorize it, but that's the one i found works without problems and with the least fuzzing about.

Oh that's great, it works the way you do it. Maybe I misunderstood the workflow. I thought I needed to authorise as a user in the Perl in another step. Thanks!

There probably is another, more sleek way. Similar on how Twitter does it, when a "do you want to authorize this app" page pops up. And no, couldn't get that to work on Twitter or Mastodon.

Still using the old Net::Twitter classes for that stuff. Didn't feel the need to upgrade my code when upgrading will probably take longer than the remaining livetime of our formerly beloved social media platform.

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