vk-forwarding-bot

A bot that forwards content from a VK group to a Telegram channel

Features

• Forward post photos and videos
• Forward story videos
• Polling VK once per hour to forward new content
• HTTP endpoint to force forwarding cycle
• 1 DB row per each VK-Telegram group-channel pair

How to run

The main challenge is to obtain a VK token. Besides that, the process is straightforward.

Obtain VK token

Follow the instructions:

• Create a VK app here https://id.vk.com/about/business/go

• If you have russian ID, then go to the Access tab and provide personal information

• If you don't have russian ID, then you have to email devsupport@corp.vk.com the following details:

  • ID of the account on the service https://id.vk.com/about/business/go
  • Information about the type of identity document: passport/ID card/other.
  • Country of issue of the document
  • Information about the number of the identity document: series, number, and other data
  • Phone number, which, if necessary, can be used for communication for data verification

  A reply should arrive within several working days

• In the Access tab toggle on Wall, Communities, Stories, and Videos advanced access (some accesses might be redundant).

• Go to the App tab and fill the Base domain field with localhost

• Fill Trusted redirect URL with https://localhost

• Generate a token. Registering a separate VK account and generating the token by its name is a good idea.

  • Send the request via browser to get code:

    https://oauth.vk.com/authorize?client_id=<App ID>&display=page&redirect_uri=https://localhost&scope=offline,photos,video,wall,groups,stories,status&response_type=code&v=5.199
    

    Some scopes might be redundant.
  • Send the request via browser to get a token:

    https://oauth.vk.com/access_token?client_id=<App ID>&client_secret=<Secure key>&redirect_uri=https://localhost&code=<code>
    

Obtain Telegram token

Find https://t.me/BotFather Telegram bot, send /newbot command, and follow the instructions.

Build

The best way to run the app is using IntelliJ. Clone the repo and open it with IntelliJ. Run/Debug configurations will be used to run the app. Create a Maven configuration with the following details in the fields:

• Run - clean package -DskipTests=true
• Profiles - automation docker
• Modify options -> Select Add VM options
• VM options:

  -DFORWARDER_VK_TOKEN=<VK token>
  -DFORWARDER_VK_USER_ID=<VK user id>
  -DFORWARDER_VK_USERNAME=<VK username>
  -DFORWARDER_VK_PASSWORD=<VK password>
  -DFORWARDER_TG_TOKEN=<TG token>
  -DFORWARDER_TG_BOT_USERNAME=<TG bot username>
  

Make sure Docker is up and press the Run button to build the project.

Run

Run docker compose -f .\target\docker\test\docker-compose.yml up -d to start the app.

Add VK-Telegram group-channel pair

Use a DB GUI to access Postgres. Use the credentials from this env file. Add a row into the vk_group_details table:

INSERT INTO vk_group_details (vk_group_id,tg_channel_id)
VALUES (<VK group id>,'<TG channel id>');

The table column's description

id	vk_group_id	last_forwarded_post_date_time	last_forwarded_story_date_time	tg_channel_id
Optional	Required	Optional	Optional	Required
Autogenerated id	See this FAX to know how to get it	By default is taken as current time minus 1 hour	By default is taken as current time minus 24 hours	Use https://t.me/myidbot to get the id

Start forwarding

To start forwarding you can either restart the app container or send the HTTP request GET http://localhost:9015/forward with the Authorization header 1234.

Deploy

The app can be deployed manually or using generaltao725/docker-webhook tool.