moviepoll-bot

This is a telegram bot for choosing movies to watch with friends. It allows each participant to suggest a movie. The bot can create a poll with all answers or choose one at random.

This is currently a work in progress, with some functions still being implemented. An instance of this bot is currently running. You can use it by adding the Telegram bot @MoviePoll_bot to a group in Telegram. This bot has privacy mode enabled, which means that the bot will only receive messages that start with the '/' symbol or mention the bot by username (see more details in Telegram's bots introduction page). In any case, use it at your own risk.

If you prefer, just run your own instance of the bot, by following the instructions below.

Setup instructions

Environment variables

In order to run the bot, you need to define the variables TOKEN and OWNER_ID as well as either USE_POLLING or APP_URL. Also, DATABASE_URL is an optional variable. These can be added to an .env file in the root directory of the project.

• To get a TOKEN, you can use the Telegram Botfather to create your bot.
• Your OWNER_ID can be found by:
  • Creating an environment variable OWNER_NAME, which is your first name, as in Telegram.
  • Running get_user_id.py and sending the command /userid to your bot.
• You can also set a DATABASE_URL to use a PostgreSQL database as bot memory. If this is not provided, the bot will sync to local files in disk.
• If you host your instance at a service like Heroku, you can set APP_URL to user webhooks. This will allow the app to be put to sleep after no interactions are made with the bot.
• If you want to use the bot in polling mode, set USE_POLLING to yes.
• For inline search functionality, you need to set OMDB_KEY to a valid OMDB API key.

Dependencies

The bot was tested in Python 3.8 and 3.10. It should work in other versions, but it's not guaranteed. To install the needed packages run:

pip install -r requirements.txt

Running the bot

python moviepoll-bot.py

Usage

Each user should suggest a movie for the poll with the command /choose TAG_or_LINK, where TAG_or_LINK is an IMDb "tt" tag (e.g., tt0068646) or the link to a movie in IMDb (which contains the "tt" tag).

If a user wants to vote but not suggest a movie, the command /participate can be used. If a (single) extra movie needs to be added to the poll (not linked to any user), the command /extra can be used.

Each user can clear their choice with the /clear command. The extra movie can be removed with the /clearextra command. It is also possible to clear all choices with the /clearall command.

The /choices command shows what each user has suggested. The /poll command creates a poll with all choices. The /random command chooses a movie at random (with a chance of rerolling, I know it makes little sense, but this is an internal "joke" from my group of friends). If there is a tie in the poll, a random winner is chosen among the tied movies, following the same rules of the /random option.

/start, /help - show this message
/choose - suggest a movie for the poll (must be a valid IMDb url or tt tag)
/participate - participate in the poll without suggesting a movie
/extra - add an extra movie to the poll (not assigned to a user)
/choices - show all current choices
/poll - create poll
/random - choose random movie among all choices
/clear - clear your choice
/clearextra - clear the extra choice
/clearall - delete all choices
/veto - veto one of the current choices

Inline search

If an OMDB API key is set, users can search for movies by title in the chat. The bot will show the first 10 results of the search.