Daniel Zotti Telegram bot

A Telegram bot designed to be included in Telegram groups. The bot expose these features:

1. Jokes
2. Welcome/Goodbye messages

Bot creation (already done, but it's here as a reminder)

• /setname @DanielZottiBot
• /setdescription A Telegram bot that manages events, jokes, member and more
• /setuserpic: /assets/profile.jpg

Bot Commands

• /start it shows a message when the bot is started
• /help it shows info about the bot
• /jokes it shows how many jokes are in the DB
• /random_joke it sends a random joke

Features

1. Jokes

Some examples to trigger a joke:

• What would Daniel say? (keyword: "Daniel")
• I need a joke! (keyword: "joke")

How to add jokes

In order to add (or edit) a joke, you have to edit the /assets/jokes.json file.

The JSON file is an array of objects having this structure:

• date (optional): data with following format yyyy-mm-dd.
• event (optional): info about the place or the occasion the joke has been stated.
• sentences (required): a list of sentences, structured this way:
  • name (optional) name of the person
  • text (required): the actual sentence

Example

{
  "date": "2021-10-05",
  "event": "In pub with friends",
  "sentences": [
    {
      "name": "Daniel",
      "text": "Why do programmers keep pressing the F5 button??"
    },
    {
      "name": "Friends",
      "text": "No, not again....."
    },
    {
      "name": "Daniel",
      "text": "Because it’s <i>refreshing</i>."
    }
  ]
}

2. Welcome/Goodbye messages

• One or more members are added to the group: @danielzotti has just added a member to the group! Let's welcome @mario aka Mario Rossi
• A member is removed from the group (or leave): Oh no! @mario aka Mario Rossi has left the group!

Installation and how to use

• nvm use to set the right node version
• npm install
• npm run start to run it locally
• npm run dev to run it locally with nodemon

Deploy

On Daniel's server through GitHub Actions

Add bot to a group

In order to make the "send joke triggered by keyword" work, the Daniel Zotti bot needs to have access to the message of a group. The group privacy has to be turned off: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/50204633/allow-bot-to-access-telegram-group-messages

Useful links

• https://medium.com/@g.c.dassanayake/deploying-a-nodejs-application-using-github-actions-e5f4bde7b21b

GitHub Actions

Add GitHub runner

Add runner on private linux server:

• Add self-hosted runner to GitHub project and install it: https://docs.github.com/en/actions/hosting-your-own-runners/adding-self-hosted-runners
• Create docker group: sudo groupadd docker
• Create a dedicated user for the runner: sudo useradd github-runner
• Add it to docker group: sudo usermod -aG docker github-runner
• Move to github-runner home folder: cd /home/github-runner

More info: https://docs.github.com/en/actions/hosting-your-own-runners/about-self-hosted-runners

Running as a service: https://docs.github.com/en/actions/hosting-your-own-runners/managing-self-hosted-runners/configuring-the-self-hosted-runner-application-as-a-service

Create workflow

Create a file in .github/workflows/main.yml