reply_bot.rst

Submission Stream Reply Bot
===========================

Most redditors have seen bots in action on the site. Reddit bots can perform a
number of tasks including providing useful information, e.g., an Imperial to
Metric units bot; convenience, e.g., a link corrector bot; or analytical
information, e.g., redditor analyzer bot for writing complexity.

PRAW provides a simple way to build your own bot using the python programming
language. As a result, it is little surprise that a majority of bots on Reddit
are powered by PRAW.

This tutorial will show you how to build a bot that monitors a particular
subreddit, `/r/AskReddit <https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/>`_, for new
submissions containing simple questions and replies with an appropriate link to
lmgtfy_ (Let Me Google That For You).

There are three key components we will address to perform this task:

1. Monitor new submissions.

2. Analyze the title of each submission to see if it contains a simple
   question.

3. Reply with an appropriate lmgtfy_ link.

LMGTFY Bot
----------

The goal of the LMGTFY Bot is to point users in the right direction when they
ask a simple question that is unlikely to be upvoted or answered by other
users.

Two examples of such questions are:

1. "What is the capital of Canada?"

2. "How many feet are in a yard?"

Once we identify these questions, the LMGTFY Bot will reply to the submission
with an appropriate lmgtfy_ link. For the example
questions those links are:

1. http://lmgtfy.com/?q=What+is+the+capital+of+Canada%3F

2. http://lmgtfy.com/?q=How+many+feet+are+in+a+yard%3F


Step 1: Getting Started
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Access to Reddit's API requires a set of OAuth2 credentials. Those credentials
are obtained by registering an application with Reddit. To register an
application and receive a set of OAuth2 credentials please follow only the
"First Steps" section of Reddit's `OAuth2 Quick Start Example`_ wiki page.

Once the credentials are obtained we can begin writing the LMGTFY Bot. Start by
creating an instance of :class:`.Reddit`:

.. code-block:: python

   import praw

   reddit = praw.Reddit(user_agent='LMGTFY (by /u/USERNAME)',
                        client_id='CLIENT_ID', client_secret="CLIENT_SECRET",
                        username='USERNAME', password='PASSWORD')

In addition to the OAuth2 credentials, the username and password of the Reddit
account that registered the application are required.

.. note:: This example demonstrates use of a *script* type application. For
   other application types please see Reddit's wiki page `OAuth2 App Types
   <https://github.com/reddit/reddit/wiki/oauth2-app-types>`_.


Step 2: Monitoring New Submissions to /r/AskReddit
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

PRAW provides a convenient way to obtain new submissions to a given
subreddit. To indefinitely iterate over new submissions to a subreddit add:

.. code-block:: python

   subreddit = reddit.subreddit('AskReddit')
   for submission in subreddit.stream.submissions():
       # do something with submission

Replace `AskReddit` with the name of another subreddit if you want to iterate
through its new submissions. Additionally multiple subreddits can be specified
by joining them with pluses, for example ``AskReddit+NoStupidQuestions``. All
subreddits can be specified using the special name ``all``.

Step 3: Analyzing the Submission Titles
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now that we have a stream of new submissions to /r/AskReddit, it is time to see
if their titles contain a simple question. We naïvely define a simple question
as:

1. It must contain no more than ten words.

2. It must contain one of the phrases "what is", "what are", or "who is".

.. warning:: These naïve criteria result in many false positives. It is
   strongly recommended that you develop more precise heuristics before
   launching a bot on any popular subreddits.

First we filter out titles that contain more than ten words:

.. code-block:: python

   if len(submission.title.split()) > 10:
           return

We then check to see if the submission's title contains any of the desired
phrases:

.. code-block:: python

   questions = ['what is', 'who is', 'what are']
   normalized_title = submission.title.lower()
   for question_phrase in questions:
       if question_phrase in normalized_title:
           # do something with a matched submission
           break

String comparison in python is case sensitive. As a result, we only compare a
normalized version of the title to our lower-case question phrases. In this
case, "normalized" means only lower-case.

The ``break`` at the end prevents us from matching more than once on a single
submission. For instance, what would happen without the ``break`` if a
submission's title was "Who is or what are buffalo?"

Step 4: Automatically Replying to the Submission
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The LMGTFY Bot is nearly complete. We iterate through submissions, and find
ones that appear to be simple questions. All that is remaining is to reply to
those submissions with an appropriate lmgtfy_ link.

First we will need to construct a working lmgtfy_ link. In essence we want to
pass the entire submission title to lmgtfy_. However, there are certain
characters that are not permitted in URLs or have other . For instance, the
space character, ' ', is not permitted, and the question mark, '?', has a
special meaning. Thus we will transform those into their URL-safe
representation so that a question like "What is the capital of Canada?" is
transformed into the link
``http://lmgtfy.com/?q=What+is+the+capital+of+Canada%3F)``.

There are a number of ways we could accomplish this task. For starters we could
write a function to replace spaces with pluses, ``+``, and question marks with
``%3F``. However, there is even an easier way; using an existing built-in
function to do so.

Add the following code where the "do something with a matched submission"
comment is located:

.. code-block:: python

   from urllib.parse import quote_plus

   reply_template = '[Let me google that for you](http://lmgtfy.com/?q={})'

   url_title = quote_plus(submission.title)
   reply_text = reply_template.format(url_title)

.. note:: This example assumes the use of Python 3. For Python 2 replace ``from
    urllib.parse import quote_plus`` with ``from urllib import quote_plus``.

Now that we have the reply text, replying to the submission is easy:

.. code-block:: python

   submission.reply(reply_text)

If all went well, your comment should have been made. If your bot account is
brand new, you will likely run into rate limit issues. These rate limits will
persist until that account acquires sufficient karma.

Step 5: Cleaning Up The Code
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

While we have a working bot, we have added little segments here and there. If
we were to continue to do so in this fashion our code would be quite
unreadable. Let's clean it up some.

The first thing we should do is put all of our import statements at the top of
the file. It is common to list built-in packages before third party ones:

.. include:: ../examples/lmgtfy_bot.py
   :code: python
   :end-line: 3

Next we extract a few constants that are used in our script:

.. include:: ../examples/lmgtfy_bot.py
   :code: python
   :start-line: 4
   :end-line: 6

We then extract the segment of code pertaining to processing a single
submission into its own function:

.. include:: ../examples/lmgtfy_bot.py
   :code: python
   :start-line: 18
   :end-line: 33

Observe that we added some comments and a ``print`` call. The ``print``
addition informs us every time we are about to reply to a submission, which is
useful to ensure the script is running.

Next, it is a good practice to not have any top-level executable code in
case you want to turn your Python script into a Python module, i.e., import it
from another Python script or module. A common way to do that is to move the
top-level code to a ``main`` function:

.. include:: ../examples/lmgtfy_bot.py
   :code: python
   :start-line: 8
   :end-line: 16

Finally we need to call ``main`` only in the cases that this script is the one
being executed:

.. include:: ../examples/lmgtfy_bot.py
   :code: python
   :start-line: 35

The Complete LMGTFY Bot
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The following is the complete LMGTFY Bot:

.. literalinclude:: ../examples/lmgtfy_bot.py
   :language: python


.. _lmgtfy: http://lmgtfy.com/
.. _OAuth2 Quick Start Example:
   https://github.com/reddit/reddit/wiki/OAuth2-Quick-Start-Example#first-steps