Mozilla TechSpeakers support app experiments

Experiments for supporting Mozilla TechSpeakers via various apps, web services etc.

CFP Calendar Bot experiment

The bot runs from index.js. It scrapes the Mozilla CFP Calendar and shares reminders of the call for proposal deadlines on various channels.

Currently the bot supports Telegram (The Mozilla TechSpeakers channel) and Twitter (the @mozTechCFPs account).

The script runs as a daemon, and at every start of the day (all times are UTC times) it builds a queue of messages that it will send out at specified times.

For all configuration see config.json.example which shows the basic structure and defaults for the config.json file that the daemon uses.

The CFP Calendar

To aid successful scraping and machine interpretation the CFP Calendar entries have some rules (as in, conventions):

• Title should be in the format <event name> (<short date>, <location>) - this makes the event glanceable in the calendar, and the bot will use the info in parenthesis when it tweets/messages about events. <short date> is the event's (not the CFP deadline's!) date, while <location> is the succint definition of where the event takes place.
• Location field is optional but recommended.
• The calendar events should be marked as full-day events, created preferably in UTC/GMT time zone.
• The description can contain anything, but some of the data is parsed and rendered by the bot. It might be useful to add a one-line summary to describe the event, but this is not currently used.
• If the event has a webpage, or even better, a dedicated cfp/call for (submissions/proposals) page, put a link into the description field to have it show up on bot tweets/messages.
• Same goes for a Twitter-handle: put @<event-twitter-handle> into anywhere in the event description and it will show up on various communications.

Feed

When the app scrapes the calendar data, it converts it into a JSON that it stores under data/cfp.json. The app then generates a daily feed from this - a list of conference proposals that are appropriate based on the current date, it also does some ranking.

These methods are mostly implemented in lib/calendar.js.
lib/dates.js has some additional support functions for all-across date handling.

Twitter

Twitter support uses a custom twitter app (API_KEY & API_SECRET), as well as a user-authentication (for @mozTechCFPs, see ACCESS_TOKEN & ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET) to tweet two different kinds of daily messages:

• Weekly highlights are tweeted on every Monday, and list the upcoming CFP deadlines that week, but mostly only include the name of the conference.
• Daily reminders are tweeted on the day a conference proposal is due, and include all relevant information that can be scraped from the calendar entry.

Most of this functionality is implemented in lib/cfp-twitter.js.

Telegram

Telegram support uses the bot integration via the Telegram Bot API. To learn more about the Telegram Bot integration, read the TinSpeaker experiment below.

The Telegram-integration is different from the Twitter one in that it only posts a single message every day to the Mozilla TechSpeakers Telegram-group. This one message can contain reminders for several events.

At the start of each week the bot will tweet about all upcoming deadlines for that week, while daily tweets include reminders for deadlines that day ("today") and the next day ("tomorrow").

Most of this functionality comes from lib/cfp-telegram.js.

Configuration

The app is configured via the config.json configuration file in the root directory of the app. To create your own config.json refer to the example file and fill in the keys and properties.

A lot of the configuration is explained in the TinSpeaker experiment, refer to the docs below for more info.

Note: CHAT_ID_DEBUG is no longer used in the app, use PREVIEWS instead.

Different channels could be created inside the service configurations, these encode different accounts & configuration settings which later can be used for different purposes. Currently only the default channel (MAIN) and the preview channel (PREVIEW) is implemented, which is used by the Preview feature.

Besides configuring the integrations (like Twitter or Telegram), the config.json has a few global options that control how the app behaves.

• DEBUG = true/false - If true the app will only output things to the console, but won't touch the integration API endpoints. Note that this doesn't apply to the PREVIEWS feature (see below).
• CFP_BOT contains configuration for features specific to the cfp bot module.
  • PREVIEWS = true/false - Uses the PREVIEW channel in the integrations to share upcoming content for debugging purposes. For any integration that has a PREVIEW channel set up with valid credentials tomorrow's content will be shared one day early which allows for catching & fixing bugs before they happen.
• PORTAL contains configuration specific to the portal module
  • SERVER_PORT & SERVER_HOST are the internal interfaces the portal will be bound to once started.
  • SHORT_LINK_HOST is the host that is used by various services when they are generating a shortened link.
  • API_HOST the host at which the API will be exposed.
  • API_VERSION API version that will show up at the root of the URL. Defaults to "1.0".

TinSpeaker experiment

TinSpeaker is an experiment researching the features of the Telegram API.

With TinSpeaker one can create a new Bot, add it to a channel and post simple, formatted messages, links etc. to that channel via the Bot using a simple html web form.

Sources are located in the /tinspeaker directory. The code lets you send messages to the Telegram API, by creating a Telegram bot (we are using the mozTechSpeakersBot).

You need to provide config.json in the root with your credentials:

{
  "TELEGRAM": {
    "BOT_ID": "bot0000000",
    "ACCESS_TOKEN": "...",
    "CHAT_ID": "000",
    "CHAT_ID_DEBUG": "000"
  }
}

BOT_ID is the ID of the created bot, ACCESS_TOKEN is the Telegram-provided access token, CHAT_ID & CHAT_ID_DEBUG are the id-s for the chatrooms you want your bot to interact with.

Launch the app locally via node.js by running:

$ node tinspeaker/server.js
Tinspeaker server started on http://localhost:8000/

After the server is started and open http://localhost:8000. You can use the debug Chat ID by providing #DEBUG in the url. You should provide your own chat ID with the bot in the CHAT_ID_DEBUG variable for testing.

You can now use the textbox to send messages (also, you can use simplified markdown formatting in your messages).

Note

You should be aware, this experiment uses crossorigin.me for API requests (as the bot API lacks any CORS headers). You should only use this for learning and experimenting, do not supply any sensitive data here.
(TODO: use a local node proxy)

FAQ

• How can a create my bot?
  Botfather to the rescue!
  Use the /start command to get info on the commands, use /newbot to create a bot.
• What is my bot's id?
  Once you named your bot, the botfather will tell you its id and your HTTP API access token:

  Done! Congratulations on your new bot...
  
  [...]
  
  Use this token to access the HTTP API:
  <bot's numeric id>:<access token>
  

  You sould prefix your bot's numeric ID with bot in the config.json.
• How to get an access token?
  See above, the access token is the second part of the value given by the botfather, after the colon.
• Where can I find the chat id?
  Chat id uniquely identifies a conversation your bot is involved in. Use the /getUpdates API call drop your bot a message on Telegram and click the Get bot updates! button in TinSpeaker.