ZooniBot

ZooniBot is a python app designed to interact with Zooniverse users on the Planet Hunters talk site (talk.planethunters.org). Talk is available via the github Zooniverse/talk repository. The aim is to provide programmatic responses to users by searching the tags they use in their posts. It began life as a hackday project at the 4th dotAstronomy conference held at the Haus der Astronomie, Heidelberg, in July 2012.

Current functionality being implemented :

Getting Started

The first thing to do is set the ZOONAME and ZOOKEY environment variables on your system. ZOONAME should be set to the bot username on the forum (e.g., zoonibot), and ZOOKEY should be the API key. For example:

export ZOONAME=zoonibot
export ZOOKEY=sdghijaoi902ijod8

Next, you want to either install the package, or add the path of the project to your PYTHONPATH env variable:

export PYTHONPATH=$PYTHONPATH:/path/to/zoonibot/

The central object is the ZooniBot class:

import zoonibot
from zoonibot.bot import ZooniBot
bot = ZooniBot(user_name, api_key)

To search for comments matching the tag "transit" since 2012-06-01:

for comment in bot.search_comments(tags=['transit'], since_date="2012-06-01"):
    print comment

To post a single comment to a given discussion:

from zoonibot.entry import Discussion, Comment, ZooniverseComment
c = Comment(body="Testing 123")
d = Discussion(id = '_your_discussion_id_here')
zc = ZooniverseComment(comment=c, discussion=d)
bot.post(zc)

In addition, there are several finder and responder functions which search for and respond to comments (shocker). They are easy to implement or extend to your liking. To use the auto help responder:

from zoonibot.finders import find_help_tags
from zoonibot.responses import help_response

bot.find_and_respond(find_help_tags, help_response)

Low level GET/POST structure of the planethunter api

#help

comment = {"body" : ‘Hiya Have you tried our tutorial video and site guide – #zoonibotans’}

if someone posts #planet or #transit if the object is an EB (eclipsing binary) -

comment ={"body": ‘You said there was a planet transit but this is a known #eclipsingbinary where there is a star moving in front of another star #zoonibotans’}

if someone posts #eclipsingbinary if the object is a planet -

comment ={"body": ‘You said this was an eclipsing binary but this is a known Kepler #planet candidate #zoonibotans’}

..note: this is not yet implemented)

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Zoonibot uses its Zooniverse API key to access the Talk API. It needs to identify with the username: zoonibot and the password obtained from the usual place. Example API calls are based on the following curl requests from @mparrish who developed the API.

Post a comment to a discussion

curl -H Content-Type:application/json -H Accept:application/json -X POST http://username:api_key@localhost:3000/api/comments.json -d '{ "discussion_id": "4f65c3792fa4986c83006f06", "comment": { "body": "Some comment" } }'

Filter by tags (OR)

curl -H Content-Type:application/json -H Accept:application/json -X GET http://LOGIN@localhost:3000/api/comments.json -d '{ "tags": ["planet"] }'

Filter by tags with a starting timestamp

curl -H Content-Type:application/json -H Accept:application/json -X GET http://LOGIN@localhost:3000/api/comments.json -d '{ "tags": ["planet"], "since": "2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC" }'

Return 20 results (maximum of 50 per page)

curl -H Content-Type:application/json -H Accept:application/json -X GET http://LOGIN@localhost:3000/api/comments.json -d '{ "tags": ["planet"], "since": "2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC", "per_page": 20 }'

Return the next 20 results

curl -H Content-Type:application/json -H Accept:application/json -X GET http://LOGIN@localhost:3000/api/comments.json -d '{ "tags": ["planet"], "since": "2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC", "per_page": 20, "page": 2 }'

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Zoonibot also has a Twitter account (Email Chris for passwords) and details of its functionality needs to go here.

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Details of permissions for bot operation in Zooniverse projects are being worked out. For now, please ask Chris Lintott (cjl@astro.ox.ac.uk) before changing any functionality that affects what Zoonibot says in public.