Daniel Zotti Telegram bot

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

Jokes
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

danielzotti/danielzotti-telegram-bot