Green Grass Bot

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What is it?

Green Grass Bot notifies you about music concerts. It searches for musical events
according to the artists you've been listening to lately. 🎶

The project gives listeners the freedom to know about musical events, regardless of the
artists' advertising budgets. 🆓

Project gives artists the freedom to spread the news about their concerts, no matter
what kind of advertisements their listeners watch. 🎸

What matters is what kind of music you listen to. Join Telegram.

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Table of contents

• General info
• Technologies
• Feedback
• Built with
• Deployment
• Contributing
• Program logic
• Program name

General info

As of the end of 2023, the project is in Python and is actively developing with single contributor.

The ultimate project goal is to create an independent information "hub" that
collects information about concerts from as many sources as possible, and also collects
user listening sessions (scrobbles) directly from music services.

At the moment, both concerts and scrobbles are obtained with Last.fm proprietary
service. More of that, concerts obtained using html parsing, what is disadvantage now.\

SQLite3 single-file database: schema, class Db.

What Green Grass Bot does in version 0.2-beta:

• Easy adds/removes Last.fm accounts on the /connect, /disconnect commands

• Monitors unlimited number of Last.fm accounts for each user (current deployment 3 max)

• Checks new concerts on request with /getgigs command

• Shows the date and place of concerts with one tap

• Automatically checks new scrobbles and new concerts daily

• Change bot language with /locale: en, ru, uk localizations are there

• Deletes all user data with a single /delete command

  

TODO: horizontal gif with mouse clicks

Technologies

Feedback

If you have any opinion about Green Grass Bot, I will appreciate if you send me any
feedback on my Telegram — even two words will be helpful. Also you can file an issue.
Feature requests are welcome too.

Built with

Online-services

Last.fm - The world's largest online music service founded in 2002 | proprietary
Telegram - A cloud-based messaging app founded in 2013 | proprietary

Software

Python - Language to work quickly and integrate systems more effectively | GPL compatible
APScheduler - Advanced Python scheduler coming with python-telegram-bot | MIT
python-dotenv - Read key-value pairs from a .env file and set them as envir-t variables | BSD
python-i18n - Translation library for Python | MIT
python-telegram-bot - Python interface for the Telegram Bot API for Python >= 3.8 | GPL

Note: As a designer and programmer, I have nothing to do with any of these services
or softwares. As a user of the Last.fm for 15 years, I have a positive opinion about Last.fm.

Deployment 24/7

This section assumes you have server: VPS, VDS or old computer in garage with internet.
There are two main ways to deploy the bot:

• Docker software. It's free for personal use
• manual deploy, with Python installed on your system.

Accounts prepare

In both cases, bare minimum that needs to be done is for you to:

• with your Telegram account, open BotFather and create telegram bot with /newbot.
  You'll get Bot Token. Update BOT_TOKEN in .env-example file with provided Bot Token

• create Last.fm API account. You'll get API key. Update API_KEY in .env-example
  file with provided API key.

• rename .env-example to .env. Keep this file secure.

Deployment with Docker

Docker is simplest approach for deployment. If you are unfamiliar with docker, it is
recommended you go through a quick tutorial for it first. Commands below works for Linux;
may be for Mac too.

1. Create a .env file as described in accounts prepare section.

2. If you are using the project as it is (no intended code changes), then simply download
   scripts/deploy_docker.sh file, put it in subfolder (e.g. scripts) and run it in CLI:

   $ cd /folder-with-.env/scripts
   $ deploy_docker.sh
   

   Your deployment will be automatically done.

3. If you want to make code changes, you should load project with source files. After
   changing the code, build docker image as shown below.

   $ cd /project_folder/
   $ git clone https://github.com/baidakovil/Green-Grass-Bot .
   ---- MAKE CODE CHANGES ----
   $ docker build -t ggb .
   $ docker run -d --name green-grass-bot --env-file ../.env --restart=always ggb
   

   Notices:

   • project_folder, green-grass-bot, ggb names are up to your discretion
   • may be you want to look at Update the application Docker tutorial section
   • .env file is being passed via the --env-file argument
   • you can run bot without server, withour docker installed, having only browser and
     Docker account. For this, go to Docker playground, log in and paste to CLI this line:

     $ docker run --env API_KEY=<<you_api_key>> --env BOT_TOKEN=<<your_bot_token>> baidakovil\greengrassbot:stable
     

Manual deployment

Manual approach is good when you are unfamiliar with Docker, or your VPS not satisfy Docker's
system requirements, or you prefer manual approaches.

1. Create a .env file as described in accounts prepare section.

2. Create project folder and clone the project:

   $ cd /projects/project_folder/
   $ git clone https://github.com/baidakovil/Green-Grass-Bot .
   

3. (Optional, recommended) Create dedicated virtual environment to use the bot and
   activate it. I use virtualenv, some venv. Path and name are to your discretion.

   $ cd /virtual_environments_folder/
   $ virtualenv env_name
   $ source env_name/bin/activate
   

4. With virtual env activated, cd into project folder and install dependencies:

   $ cd /project_folder/
   $ python3 -m pip install --no-cache-dir -r requirements.txt
   

5. Try to run the bot (not good for 24/7 deployment) by running main.py file:

   $ python3 main.py
   

6. Choose one of approaches to sustainable deploy 7/24/365. Most known are:

   • systemd - Linux process manager, default in many distributives (e.g. Ubuntu)
     the way I do prefer. With this, you'll need to create a file for systemd with
     deploy settings. As example of this file, use greengrassbot.service-example
     file in scripts.
     As shortest as possible manual, possibly missing some steps needed in your system,
     include these steps:

     1. Insert paths to greengrassbot.service-example file
     2. Delete -example from the filename
     3. Copy the file to /lib/systemd/system/
     4. Run in CLI: sudo systemctl start greengrassbot

     To read logs in real time, use sudo journalctl -u ggbot.service --follow

   • screen - utility for Linux systems. I never used it, but there is a signs it
     popular. For sample tutorial, I think, you can follow the tjtanjin's guide.

   Note: to use .github/deployment.yml workflow for automatic deploy you'll need to
   set system rule for executing sudo systemctl restart greengrassbot.service command
   without password. askUbuntu on this topic.

Contributing

If you wish to make code contributions to the project, you are welcome. What it need at
most — professional review and vectors of evolution.

Program logic

Please look for Developer Guide

Next steps

soon

Program name

Green Grass refers to High Hopes popular Pink Floyd's song. To be honest I do not like it much.

Title photo credit: American rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix performing with The Jimi Hendrix
Experience at the Monterey Pop Festival, California, USA, June 18, 1967. Bruce Fleming/AP Images