pollevbot

pollevbot is a bot that automatically responds to polls on pollev.com. It continually checks if a specified host has opened any polls. Once a poll has been opened, it submits a random response.

Requires Python 3.7 or later.

Dependencies

Requests, BeautifulSoup.

APScheduler to deploy to Heroku.

Usage

Install pollevbot:

pip install pollevbot

Set your username, password, and desired poll host (for example, using input()):

user = input('username: ')
password = input('password: ')
host = input('pollev.com url extension: ')

And run the script.

from pollevbot import PollBot

user = input('username: ')
password = input('password: ')
host = input('pollev.com url extension: ')

# If you're not using a UW or Stanford PollEv account,
# add the argument "login_type='pollev'"
with PollBot(user, password, host) as bot:
    bot.run()

Alternatively, you can clone this repo and run pollevbot/main.py, which will read username, password, and host from input(). The input for password will be hidden.

Note: To hide password input, make sure you are running the program from a terminal window and not an IDE. If you run from an IDE, you will see

GetPassWarning: Can not control echo on the terminal.
Warning: Password input may be echoed.

and your password will not be hidden.

Usage for macOS with daily start/end time feature:

In main.py, use the optional daily_start and daily_end arguments in PollBot() to set the desired daily start and end time. Format using 24 hour time, HH:MM:SS. Then run

caffeinate python -m pollevbot.main

This will suspend the python program from running outside the specified times, while also preventing the computer from sleeping. To stop the program, simply Ctrl-C. Note that caffeinate only prevents idle sleep, so make sure you don't close the lid or manually put the computer to sleep.

The purpose of this feature, as opposed to deploying via Heroku (detailed below), is to avoid having to authenticate with Duo every time the program runs. With this feature, one can schedule the program to run, log in beforehand, and forget about it.

Heroku

pollevbot can be scheduled to run at specific dates/times (UTC timezone) using Heroku:

Required configuration variables:

• DAY_OF_WEEK: cron string specifying weekdays to run pollevbot (e.g. mon,wed is Monday and Wednesday).
• HOUR: cron string (UTC time) specifying which hours to run pollevbot.
• LIFETIME: Time to run pollevbot before terminating (in seconds). Set to inf to run forever.
• LOGIN_TYPE: Login protocol to use (either uw or pollev).
• MINUTE: cron string specifying what minutes to run pollevbot.
• PASSWORD: PollEv account password.
• POLLHOST: PollEv host name.
• USERNAME: PollEv account username.

Example

Suppose you want to answer polls made by poll host teacher123 every Monday and Wednesday from 11:30 AM to 12:30 PM PST (6:30 PM to 7:30 PM UTC) in your timezone on your UW account. To do this, set the config variables as follows:

• DAY_OF_WEEK: mon,wed
• HOUR: 18
• LIFETIME: 3600
• LOGIN_TYPE: uw
• MINUTE: 30
• PASSWORD: yourpassword
• POLLHOST: teacher123
• USERNAME: yourusername

Then click Deploy App and wait for the app to finish building. pollevbot is now deployed to Heroku!

Disclaimer

I do not promote or condone the usage of this script for any kind of academic misconduct or dishonesty. I wrote this script for the sole purpose of educating myself on cybersecurity and web protocol automation, and cannot be held liable for any indirect, incidental, consequential, special, or exemplary damages arising out of or in connection with the usage of this script.