Advice Bot

A combination repo of a web-app and a zulip bot.

Web app

Collects advice from RC alums! Uses mongodb atlas for a DB and hosted on heroku.

https://advice.recurse.com

Steps to run locally:

1. Create a file called .env in the root of the project similar to the .env.example file
2. You will need an OAUTH client ID and client secret, you can generate this in recurse.com settings > apps and copy it into your .env file as OAUTH_CLIENT_ID and OAUTH_CLIENT_SECRET
3. You will need a MongoDB atlas DB. You can create one and copy it into your .env file as MONGODB_URI
4. SESSION_SECRET can be any random string
5. Run npm install to install all dependencies
6. Run npm run dev to run it locally
7. Go to http://localhost:3001, you should see the front-end
8. Ping me on zulip if this doesn't work

Zulip bot

Recursers can subscribe to the "Advice of the Day!" bot to get one piece of advice from an RC alum everyday

https://recurse.zulipchat.com/#narrow/pm-with/506831-advice-bot

Steps to run locally:

1. You will need to do all the steps to run the web app locally above (since the bot needs the APIs)
2. Run an ngrok tunnel that points to http://localhost:3001
3. Create a new file in the project root called zuliprc
4. Create a new bot in Zulip > gear icon > Personal settings > Bots as an outgoing webhook with the Endpoint URL set to <your-ngrok-url>/api/bot/handleMessage
5. Copy paste the bot config (zuliprc) into your zuliprc file
6. Now if you DM your bot, you should get a response

Scheduled APIs

(Defined in the /api/scheduled.js file)

This project uses cron-job.org to schedule tasks:

1. /api/scheduled/sendAdvice is called everyday. This API sends one random piece of advice from the database to all subscribers.

2. /api/scheduled/introduceBot is called every week on Wednesdays. This API checks whether a new batch has started in the last week, and sends an introductory message on Zulip if so.

   NOTE: You will need a recurse.com personal access token to run this API locally, since it needs to check whether a new batch has started. You can get a personal access token from recurse.com settings > apps and paste it to your .env file as PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN

Bot API

(Defined in the /api/bot.js file)

1. /api/bot/handleMessage is called from the zulip bot (which is defined as an outgoing webhook)

Advice APIs

(Defined in the /api/advice.js file, these APIs are called from the frontend)

1. /api/advice/submit
2. /api/advice/list lists all the advice submitted by a logged-in user