puzzle-hunt-telegram-bot

MSOC 2021 Puzzle Hunt Telegram Bot. Inspired by the Royal Flush Telegram Bot

Link to the bot here.

How it works

The main.py file contains the regular commands such as /start, /score, and /hints. It will then lead you to puzzles_menu.py where it contains the main puzzle conversation handler and query handlers related to the /puzzles command. Inside is a list of methods handling different cases and options, depending on the user, such as asking for a hint and retrying a puzzle.

The puzzles are stored in a object-oriented manner inside cmd_base.py. In that same file, there are also methods regarding progress update because it has to be continuously updated with the DontPad database.

Finally, reading/writing the JSON-styled database from/to DontPad is implemented in dpad_manager.py.

Hidden files

• game_data/ directory, containing the puzzle data (game_data.json) and the images/texts (either in .jpg or .txt format) for the description.
• env.py, containing the bot token TOKEN and the DontPad URL DP_URL.

Deploying

This bot is currently deployed with Google Cloud SDK. Follow the provided guide to install GCloud SDK and prepare your terminal on this directory. On main.py, provide this function to be the first point of compilation.

def FUNCTION_NAME(request):
    # Define the bot
    updater = Updater(token=TOKEN, use_context=True)

    if request.method == 'POST':
        <Some commands>

    return <Message>

Provide certain modules to be imported along with the versions inside requirements.txt, for example

python-telegram-bot==13.4.1

First Deploy

Create a new project in Google Cloud, store it's name in <PROJECT-ID>. Run this command on your terminal and replace <TOKEN> with your bot API token. Make sure you have turned on Cloud Build API for your project.

gcloud functions deploy FUNCTION_NAME --set-env-vars "TELEGRAM_TOKEN=<TOKEN>" --runtime python38 --trigger-http --project=<PROJECT-ID>

Once the deploy finishes (around 2 minutes), it will provide you an URL for the webhook setup. Copy the URL as <URL> and run this command.

curl "https://api.telegram.org/bot<TOKEN>/setWebhook?url=<URL>"

Re-deploying

Should you apply some changes in your code, you can re-deploy your bot using a similar command.

gcloud functions deploy FUNCTION_NAME --runtime python38 --trigger-http --project=<PROJECT-ID>

For double check, set the webhook again.

curl "https://api.telegram.org/bot<TOKEN>/setWebhook?url=<URL>"

Note

I'm leaving Procfile here for now, it's actually for Heroku.