minderly-bot

This is a capstone project at the end of the main Ruby curriculum at Microverse - @microverseinc.

Built With

• Ruby

Description

• This is a date checker. It keeps track of all your important events, such as birthdays, anniversaries, etc and sends out message notifications.

• It also sends out RSS feeds to subscribed users and channels.

• The Telegram Bot Api was used to build this project.

Live Demo

Live Demo

Run instructions

• You can clone the GitHub repo and type the following commands in the terminal to run the bot locally

Setting Environment Variables

• You can set environment variables locally by creating .env file with the following

   token='bot_token'
   group_id='group_id'
   channel_id='channel_id'
   default_chat_id=chat_id
  

  • Then run the following commands in the terminal inside the project's root directory

  bundle install
  ruby ./bin/bot_runner.rb
  

Alternatively, you can create an executable script to run it.

• To add the bot to Telegram, one has to create a Telegram bot account for it using BotFather, and connect to it using the API obtained token.

How to use the bot

Make sure the bot is running

• In order to use MinderlyBot one has to have a Telegram account.
• Ordinary users are able to interact with the bot via their Telegram accounts.
• The bot is also able to post messages to channels and groups if it is added as an administrator.
• You can also subscribe channels as users, and channels as well as group members are able to interact with the bot.

Available commands

• Please enter any of the following commands: ["/start", "/help", "/stop", "/news", "/add_my_birthday", "/add_birthday", "/add_anniversary", "/subscribe", "/update"]

Possible errors

• An incorrect entry for the date might throw a Date.parse error:
  • Example of an invalid date format
    • "769887/22/98"
  • Bot Response:
    • "invalid date: Incorrect format for birthday date entry."
• Make sure you enter the date in the proposed format.
• Correct entries for date
  • Should be in the format "DD/MM/YYYY", for example, "12/06/1993"

Run Tests

rspec --format doc

Alternatively you can use npm commands after installing node and npm on your machine

• npm start to run the bot
• npm test to run the tests

Deployment

• You can deploy on Heroku and run the app in the console via Heroku run or recreate the bot application using the rails framework in order to deploy the bot with a Procfile.

Potential Future Improvements / Ambitions

• Recreate the bot using a framework such as rails or sinatra.
• Add integration to Google Calendar API in order to access national public holidays for the user.

Authors

👤 Marylene Sawyer

• Github: @Bluette1
• Twitter: @MaryleneSawyer
• Linkedin: Marylene Sawyer

Acknowledgements

• Creating a Bot using the Telegram Bot API

• There are great samples at this site

• To read more about RSS feeds visit this Medium site

🤝 Contributing

Contributions, issues and feature requests are welcome!

Feel free to check the issues page.

Show your support

Give a ⭐️ if you like this project!

📝 License

This project is MIT licensed.