FatFingerHelperBot

/u/FatFingerHelperBot on Reddit

Overview

When using mobile Reddit client apps (like BaconReader), occasionally I'll come across a comment containing a link that I want to visit, but takes several (or - in the case of link display strings like "." - many) tries to tap. This bot detects comments containing short links and replies with longer link strings in order to make it easier for mobile users to tap them.

This code runs on a small AWS EC2 instance alongside statsd/Graphite/Grafana, enabling me to collect some metrics and create some fun dashboards!

MobileLinkHelperBot.py

The main bot code. This script will monitor /r/all and detect valid comments that contain link display strings of <= 3 characters. The bot will reply to any such comments, providing a longer display string for any links that were too short in order to make them more easily tappable for users of mobile Reddit client apps.

MobileLinkHelperMailMonitor.py

This script enables the "message to delete" functionality. It listens to the bot's inbox, detects messages with the body "delete {ID_HERE}," and deletes the offending comment as long as the message's author is the same as the parent comment's author.