Dota Responses Reddit Bot

Bot adding reply comments with links to appropriate responses found on /r/dota2.

The bot replies only for the comments that are responses.

For example: "Selemene commands" will return a Luna response (like on the screenshot above).

The original bot account is no longer active, but over 4 years of running it gained over 100,000 karma points on Reddit. Currently the bot's account is dota2_responses_bot.

Active maintainer

MePsyDuck

Comment/Submission text processing

• All the body text is transformed into lowercase
• Any punctuation is replaced with spaces
• Multiple spaces are trimmed to single space.
• If comment has blockquote, first blockquote is considered for matching.

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TODO

• (If possible) Add hero flair in responses (Waiting on reddit to support this in reddit redesign).

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Some stats and general info

/r/dota2 subreddit generates around 3.5k comments/day, peaking around 12.5k during December (stats via subbreditstats. Bot should be able to handle more than 15k comments/day(10 comments/minute) easily (Just an estimate, actual performance not yet tested).

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Environment variables

Config variables needed to be set in environment for running the bot:

Variable	Required?	Default	Description
CLIENT_ID	Required	None.	client_id generated by Reddit.
CLIENT_SECRET	Required	None.	secret generated by Reddit.
SUBREDDIT	Optional	dota2	Subreddit the bot is going to work on.
REDDIT_USERNAME	Required	None.	Username for the Reddit account being used.
REDDIT_PASSWORD	Required	None.	Password for the Reddit account being used.
CACHE_PROVIDER	Optional	memory	Caching module to be used. Valid choices : redis, memory, db.
CACHE_URL	Optional	cache.json	URL path to redis instance/database/file in memory. Based on CACHE_PROVIDER.
DATABASE_PROVIDER	Optional	sqlite	DBMS to be used. Valid choices : sqlite, mysql, postgres
DATABASE_URL	Optional	bot.db	URL to the database.
LOGGING_LEVEL	Optional	INFO	Logging level. Valid choices : Logging levels

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Changelog

3.1

• User(OP) can now request to update the response using another comment under bot's comment. The comment should be in the format Try <hero_name>
• Users can now request for a hero specific response by adding <hero_name> :: prefix to the response. Has more priority than user's flair.

3.0

Major revamp for the bot. Things that are new:

• Bot can reply to responses that are in blockquotes and ignore rest of comment.
• Added support for TI chat wheel sounds.
• Comment on post submission if title is a response.

Things updated:

• Support sqlite, MySQL and PostgreSQL dbs via Pony-ORM.
• Added caching for comment ids (redis, db and in memory/file based).
• Revamped parsing of responses from wiki (now directly from the sources).
• Revamped parsing flair css and image directories from subreddit css.
• Better parsing for comments.
• Added better support for custom responses.
• Updated excluded responses.
• Updated docs.
• Updated tests.

2.7

• Now hero portraits (flairs) are added before the response
• The bot tries to match the hero response with the hero in the comment's author flair first

2.6

• Added a few Io and Phoenix responses

2.5

• Fixed random responses for the "Shitty wizard" line - now it's working properly
• Added special treatment for the comments related to "One of my favorites" response
• Moved from a dictionary for responses and a list for comment ids to databases

2.4

• Added random responses for the "Shitty wizard" line (needs testing)

2.3

• Added tests
• Code refactoring
• Added Travis CI and CodeClimate checking

2.2

• Code refactoring (renaming variables, deleting unnecessary methods, etc.)
• Response in the reply is now an exact quote of the original comment
• Added comments

2.1

• Bot is now adding the source of the response (e.g. hero name) to the comment (needs testing)

2.0

• Added Arc Warden responses

1.9

• File paths are now relative to the script file location (using os)
• Added dates to logging
• Logs are saved in respective files on the server
• Fixed a bug with adding same comment a few times in sticky threads that are on the subreddit for a long time (time-saving workaround)

1.8

• Change in the main loop of the script - much better efficiency (time)

1.7

• Changed reply comment formatting

1.6

• Removed keyword triggering as /r/dota2 community did not like it

1.5

• Added keywords that trigger the bot: "just do it", "beautiful", "from the ghastly eyrie", "sniper", "ppd", "leafeator", "ur/your brother"
• Code refactoring

1.4

• Fixed a bug created by 1.2 changes
• Changed submissions number in hot to 25
• Added more excluded responses

1.3

• Removed responses such as "thank you", hero names and item names (anti-spam)

1.2

• Accept comments with extra letters added for emphasis

1.1

• One word responses are no longer in the dictionary
• Replaced double spaces with single space
• Bot is now working with hot submissions

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Treeware License

Basically MIT License, but if you use the code (learning or project purposes), you have to plant at least one tree at some future time.