Taubenschlag

What is it

A Twitter bot that handles oAuth to get authorized by multiple Twitter accounts to retweet on their behalf.

The bot finds new tweets that match to a predefined ruleset and retweets them on behalf the joined users.

Features:

• Top 10 User Leaderboard (most retweets)
• Backup via ssh (scp to a remote server on every new user account)
• Send commands via Direct Message to the bot
  • get-bot-info
  • get-cmd-list
  • get-info
  • help
  • set-rt-level
• Supports 3 different subscription levels (1 = high class posts, 2 = informative, 3 = almost everything)
• Post new Tweets to Telegram

Installation guide for debian 10

Request a Twitter dev account: https://developer.twitter.com/en/account/environments

Create an A record with domain and IP to the server of the Bot.

You need a server with Python3, a webserver and a reverse proxy. The Webserver and reverse proxy can easily get provided with apache2:

apt-get install apache2 python3-certbot-apache

Set the hostname in /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.conf to taubenschlag.yourdomain.com

 systemctl restart apache2

Follow the certbot wizard and select taubenschlag.yourdomain.com for HTTPS activation and choose "redirect http to https"

certbot --apache
systemctl restart apache2

Now try to access the new host: https://taubenschlag.yourdomain.com

We have to configure a reverse proxy in apache:

sudo a2enmod proxy proxy_http

And add those 2 lines to /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default-le-ssl.conf

ProxyPass /oAuthTwitter http://127.0.0.1:17613/oAuthTwitter
ProxyPassReverse /oAuthTwitter http://127.0.0.1:17613/oAuthTwitter

Restart the server:

shutdown -r 0

Download/Copy Taubenschlag and make the app available in /opt/taubenschlag.

Install requirements:

apt install python3-pip
python3 -m pip install -r /opt/taubenschlag/requirements.txt
cd /var/www/html 
rm *
ln -s /opt/taubenschlag/html/* .

Create two apps in https://developer.twitter.com/en/account/environments

1. Is the main app with read+write permissions (user auth to this app)
2. Is the DM sending interface app with read+write+dm permissions (user dont know about his app)

You have to provide a callback URL for app 1: https://taubenschlag.yourdomain.com/oAuthTwitter/verify

Copy the access tokens from the two twitter apps to ./conf.d/secrets.cfg (use the template in ./conf.d/secrets.cfg_template).

Modify ./conf.d/main.cfg if needed.

Modify ./conf.d/rt-level-rule-set.cfg to setup RT sources.

Autostart and access to the Bot output

Install screen if it is not: apt install screen

Create a cronjob as root with: crontab -e

and insert the line:

@reboot su - root -c "screen -dm -S taubenschlag /opt/taubenschlag/taubenschlag.py"

Thats it, now restart and see if it works:

shutdown -r 0

After the reboot test: https://taubenschlag.yourdomain.com and try one auth!

To see the output of the bot use as root:

screen -x taubenschlag

Hint: After screen -x press tab-tab, to leave screen press CTRL+a and then d.

Autorenewal of the SSL certificate

Create a cronjob with:

crontab -e

and add this lines:

SHELL=/bin/sh
PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin

0 */12 * * * root test -x /usr/bin/certbot  -a \! -d /run/systemd/system &&  perl -e 'sleep int(rand(43200))' &&  certbot -q renew

Backup

Its important to backup /opt/taubenschlag/db/taubenschlag.json, do it with cat taubenschlag.json > backup.json.

The bot offers in main.cfg the setting ssh_backup_on_new_user. If set to True the bot copy the db on every new user auth via ssh (scp) to a remote server. Login for scp can be defined in secrets.cfg.

To restore a backup just stop the bot, do cat backup_file > taubenschlag.json and start the bot.

Report bugs or suggest features

https://github.com/oliver-zehentleitner/Taubenschlag/issues

Todo

• https://github.com/oliver-zehentleitner/Taubenschlag/projects/1

Contributors

We open source!

Donate

Since you are probably a developer yourself, you will understand very well that the creation of open source software is not free - it requires technical knowledge, a lot of time and also financial expenditure.

If you would like to help me to dedicate my time and energy to this project, even small donations are very welcome.

❤️ Sponsor (GitHub)

Terra (LUNA, UST, ...): terra1yt34qmmycextztnj9mpt3mnjzqqvl8jtqqq7g9
BTC: 39fS74fvcGnmEk8JUV8bG6P1wkdH29GtsA
ETH: 0x1C15857Bf1E18D122dDd1E536705748aa529fc9C

Commercial Support

Do you need a developer, operator or consultant?

Contact me for a non-binding initial consultation via my company LUCIT from Vienna (Austria) or via Telegram/WhatsApp.