CloudBot-Plugins

James' plugins for snoonetIRC's fork of CloudBot (gonzobot branch.)

Plugin	Status	Description	Prerequisites
follow twitch	Stable	Follow specified channels & announce when they go live on IRC	python-twitch-client
follow twitter	Stable	Follow specified accounts & echo their tweets on IRC	python-twitter
next launch	Stable	Alerts about upcoming rocket launches	launchlibrary
reddit news	Stable	Follows specified subreddits & echo when top post changes on IRC	PRAW

About

My cloudbot plugins will enable your bot to follow twitter users, twitch users, and reddit subreddits of your choosing, echoing new posts to your IRC channel in real time. It also is a useful tool for tracking future rocket launches.

This project was inspired by the MaxQ bot in #SpaceX on EsperNet. In 2017, I decided I wanted to recreate MaxQ's functionality for another channel on Freenode. When I first inquired about the MaxQ bot, its source code was not yet public. So, I started working on my own bot that would behave similarly.

My first attempt was a bot from scratch. While I did manage to make some progress, it was too difficult and clunky for other people to use. It soon became obvious that writing plugins for an existing bot platform would be superior to writing my own from scratch.

My initial belief was that periodic hooks were the key to emulating the MaxQ bot. I tried to find a popular bot ecosystem that supported periodic hooks. I tested a variety of bots, but none of the projects currently maintained had periodic hook support, including the original CloudBot project. After nearly giving up, I found a fork of CloudBot by snoonetIRC. It is frequently updated, maintained, and best of all, written with periodic hook support.

Today, the MaxQ bot's source code is public and available for you to use. It's a from-scratch bot that lacks the plug-and-play usability of CloudBot. No source code from that project has been used on this project. (In fact, I only looked through his code for the first time quite recently.)

Because I want to do things above and beyond the limited features of MaxQ, including utilize other CloudBot plugins, my plugin project will continue to be updated and maintained.

Example Output

An example of what you can expect on your IRC channel (alt-l is the bot.)

00:34:21 alt-l | [Twitter] @Gtwy wrote: Does anybody seriously think the new 3-camera iPhone is
               | aesthetically pleasing?  (https://twitter.com/Gtwy/status/1175266879004237824)
13:09:45 alt-l | [Reddit] Trending on /r/netsec: GitHub - secrary/Andromeda: Andromeda - Interactive
               | Reverse Engineering Tool for Android Applications (https://redd.it/d7t41m)
19:14:28    wx | %nl
19:14:29 alt-l | H-IIB 304 | Kounotori 8 (HTV-8) - Osaki Y LP2, Tanegashima, Japan -
               | https://youtu.be/EqGcvxZRIzI - NET 2019-09-24 16:05:05 UTC (T-16:50:36)

How to install

First, clone and configure the snoonetIRC fork of Cloudbot. Verify that the bot joins the correct channels and that there are no errors in the logs.

If CloudBot is working correctly, clone my plugins with the following command. Do not run this command from inside the CloudBot directory nor a subdirectory of the Cloudbot directory. I recommend running the command from the parent directory of the CloudBot directory.

git clone https://github.com/gtwy/CloudBot-Plugins.git
cd CloudBot-Plugins

If you intend to use all of my plugins, install the python dependencies all at once using using pip with the following command from inside my Cloudbot-Plugins directory:

pip install -r requirements.txt

(If you get an error, try using pip3 instead of pip).

Finally, copy the plugins to CloudBot's plugin directory:

cp *.py ../CloudBot/plugins

(Assuming that my CloudBot-Plugins clone directory shares the same parent directory with the CloudBot clone directory.)

Configuration

Edit CloudBot's config.json file. Add API keys for these services in the existing "api_keys" block.

    "api_keys": {
        "reddit_news_client_id": "",
        "reddit_news_client_secret": "",
        "twitch_client_id": "",
        "twitch_client_secret": "",
        "twitter_consumer_key": "",
        "twitter_consumer_secret": "",
        "twitter_access_token": "",
        "twitter_access_secret": ""
    },

Just before the very end of config.json, add a block named "james-plugins." Don't forget to add a comma after closing the logging block. The bottom of config.json should look something like this when you are finished.

    },
    "james-plugins": {
        "reddit_news_subreddits": [
                "netsec",
		"ReverseEngineering",
		"malware",
		"blackhat"
        ],
        "reddit_news_output_server": "freenode",
        "reddit_news_output_channel":"#lowtech-dev"
        "follow_twitter_accounts": [
                "Gtwy",
                "hiredbeard",
                "fauxicles"
        ],
        "follow_twitter_output_server": "freenode",
        "follow_twitter_output_channel": "#lowtech-dev",
	"follow_twitch_channels": [
		"pcJIM",
		"javagoogles"
	],
	"follow_twitch_output_server": "freenode",
	"follow_twitch_output_channel": "#lowtech-dev",
        "launch_output_server": "freenode",
        "launch_output_channel": "#lowtech-dev"
    }
}

Future versions will use a different format for server and channel in config.json.

Considerations

Service	Minimum Hook Interval	Maximum Hook Interval
reddit	60	Unlimited
twitter	60	Unlimited
twitch	30	Unlimited

Interval durations outside these ranges will exceed the API limits of each service resulting in your API key being rate limited and eventually blacklisted.

Only one twitter account is polled at each interval. Hence, the more people you follow, the more delayed their tweets will be.

Support

I'll do the best I can to answer questions/issues. Feel free to contact me here or on Twitter @Gtwy.