Feed Bot

A discord bot for emulating an rss feed reader within your guild channels.

Discord Developer Portal

Table of Contents

• Commands
• Environment Variables
• Development
• Deployment
• Production
• Support The Project

Commands

File Commands: Commands for exporting channel subscriptions

• Permissions: Channel members can export a channel's subscriptions

Command	Description
.export	Sends a generated .txt file of all the channel's subscriptions to the channel

Reddit Commands: RSS like updates for subreddits within channels

• Permissions: Only a guild owner can invoke these commands.

Command	Description	Example
.subreddit ls	List the subreddits this channel subscribes to.	.subreddit ls
.subreddit add <arg>	Add subreddit(s) as an rss feed for this channel.	.subreddit add cyberDeck,r/ROS or .subreddit add r/linux or .subreddit add https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/,cyberDeck
.subreddit rm <arg>	Remove rss feed of subreddit(s) from this channel	.subreddit rm r/cyberDeck or .subreddit rm r/ROS,r/linux
.subreddit prune	Removes all subreddit rss feeds within a given channel	.subreddit prune

RSS Feed Commands: RSS feed updates within your guild channels

• Permissions: Only a guild owner can invoke these commands.

Command	Description	Example
.rss ls	List the RSS Feeds that this channel subscribes to.	.rss ls
.rss add <arg>	Adds website rss feeds to the channel.	.rss add https://corbettreport.com/feed or .rss add https://unlimitedhangout.com/feed/,https://corbettreport.com/feed/ *trailing slash optional
.rss rm <arg>	Removes specific rss feeds from channel.	.rss rm https://corbettreport.com/feed or .rss rm https://unlimitedhangout.com/feed/,https://corbettreport.com/feed/ *trailing slash optional
.rss prune	Removes all web rss feeds within a given channel.	.rss prune

Environment Variables

For Discord:

Add BOT_TOKEN environment variable. See the tutorial from discord.py on how to create a bot account.

Make sure to enable the Message Content intent for the bot whose token you are using. The bot will also need the Send Messages permission as part of granting the bot access to your server.

For Reddit:

Add the following environment variables:

REDDIT_CLIENT_ID=<application_id> # sent in email from reddit after registering app
REDDIT_CLIENT_SECRET=<client_secret>
REDDIT_USERNAME=<username>
REDDIT_PASSWORD=<password_to_login_to_reddit>
REDDIT_USER_AGENT=<custom_user_agent>

See asyncpraw documentation for more information.

For Images:

IMAGES_URL specifies a url to a cloudfront distribution or s3 url where your images are stored and can be fetched. The IMAGES_URL constant is accessed via the CommonUtilities class. IMAGES_URL returns an empty string if not set.

For Managing Environment Variables"

For managing environment variables we suggest using direnv

This is what our .envrc should look like.

export BOT_TOKEN=<discord_bot_token_from_developer_portal>
export REDDIT_CLIENT_ID=<application_id> # sent in email from reddit after registering app
export REDDIT_CLIENT_SECRET=<client_secret>
export REDDIT_USERNAME=<username>
export REDDIT_PASSWORD=<password_to_login_to_reddit>
export REDDIT_USER_AGENT=<custom_user_agent>
export IMAGE_URL=<cloudfront_distribution_url_or_s3_url>

Development

Running the project is done within a Docker Container

If you are on linux make sure to check out the linux post-install section in the docker docs to giver your user permissions

$ sudo groupadd docker
$ sudo usermod -aG docker $USER
# close and re-open terminal
$ newgrp docker

Now that your user has permissions and you have cloned the repository you can run:

$ docker compose watch

This project features hot-reloading of the container (syncing/restarting) when changes are made to the feed_bot directory and packages are added to pyproject.toml.

To view logs in a different terminal instance run

$ docker compose logs --follow bot

To open a shell to the noSQL database run

$ docker compose exec mongo mongosh mongodb://root:feed_bot@mongo:27017/

mongodb cheatsheet

To run test cases run

$ docker compose exec bot sh -c "poetry run pytest"

To stop the container and remove persisting volumes

$ docker compose down -v

Outside of the container

Open a terminal instance and cd into the project's root directory.

Configure `pre-commit`` for linting and style guide coverage. Run:

$ pre-commit install

To add a python package run:

$ poetry add <pypi_package>

You may need to install the project locally first with poetry

$ poetry install

Deployment

This project utilizes Github Actions for deploying a production ready docker container to the github container registry. For more information see working with the container registry.

To push a new container image to github packages create a release from the main branch with a specified git tag. The git tag should be labelled with a version number such as 1.2.3.

(main branch) $ git tag 1.2.3
(main branch) $ git tag push 1.2.3
(main branch) $ gh release create

Production

There are a variety of options available to you for deploying Feed Bot including on your machine. We will share with you how to deploy this bot to a Digital Ocean droplet. We are choosing Digital Ocean for:

1. ease of use through the GUI and CLI
2. 100% uptime and resilient infrastructure that only a cloud platform can provide

Whether hosting on Digital Ocean, another provider, or your local machine make sure that you have Docker installed.

• Once Docker is installed create a directory called feed_bot.
• Inside of this directory create a compose.yaml file.
• Copy the contents of compose-prod.yaml and paste it into the compose.yaml file and save the file.
• Now make sure to export environment variables
• After exporting environment variables you can run the project with docker compose up -d. To see the bot in action run docker compose logs --follow bot

Digital Ocean Recommendations

• After creating a project for your bot(s), Create a droplet. The Create button can be found in the Droplets section.
• Choose the region closest to your end users. If this is just you, choose the region closest to you.
• Choose the operating system that you are most familiar with. For demonstration lets stick with Ubuntu.
• Stick with Basic for Droplet Size.
• Select Premium AMD and the $7/mo plan
• Choose SSH Key for Authentication Method (This is for CLI Access). If this is your first time using Digital Ocean you should be prompted to upload an SSH key otherwise this can be found in Settings
• Under Finalize Details, change the field for Hostname to something easy and memorable
• Click Create Droplet

Interact with your droplet

Run:

$ doctl compute ssh <hostname>

Once in the virtual machine we are going to add docker, direnv, and our Feed Bot directory

$ snap install docker
$ apt install direnv
$ echo 'eval "$(direnv hook bash)"' >> .bashrc
$ mkdir feed_bot && cd feed_bot

Head to the environment variables section and add the env vars.

# ~/feed_bot
$ touch .envrc
$ vim .envrc # add the environment variables key/value pairs and to save (:wq + ENTER)
$ direnv allow . # you may need to close and reopen the connection to the droplet for direnv to be functional

If you read above you know we'll need to copy the contents of compose-prod.yaml into a created compose.yaml file.

# ~/feed_bot
$ touch compose.yaml
$ vim compose.yaml # paste contents of compose-prod.yaml when ready to save do (:wq + ENTER)

Now lets run the bot in the background and see what it is doing.

# ~/feed_bot
$ docker compose up -d
$ docker compose logs --follow bot

To close the logs type CTRL/CMD + C and to close the ssh connection type exit in the terminal.

Now re-read the create a bot account discord.py tutorial. The only thing that is left to do is invite the bot to the discord server(s) you want it in.

Support The Project

Alternatives:

• Use My Digital Ocean Referral Link
• Use My Amazon Affiliate Link