RedditContributionTracker

Summary

Python script for a reddit bot that does the following:

Scans one or more reddit threads for user contributions (top-level comments and replies to top-level comments)
Sorts the results to determine:
- The most helpful users (measured by the number of replies they've made to other top-level comments)
- The most helpful users who have not received replies to their own top-level comments
Replies to the thread with the results

Instructions

Configure the bot using environment variables for your use case (see full ist of options below).

# On local machine
export comment_mode='edit'
export posts='[ { "subreddit":"abc", "post_regex":"Hello world" }, { "subreddit":"Zebra", "post_regex":"Fancy thread title" } ]'

# On Heroku
heroku config:set client_id=foobar
heroku config:set client_secret=zebra

Run the bot (optionally supplying command-line arguments, which override your environment variables):

$ python3 main.py --debug True --reply_threshold 5

Configuration

Configure your bot

client_id: The ID of your bot (see bot_creds_example.png).
client_secret: The secret of your bot (see bot_creds_example.png).
user_agent: User agent passed to PRAW (likely the name of your bot or a description of the specific application).
username: The username of your bot's reddit account.
password: The password for your bot's account.

Configure which post your bot scans

posts: A JSON string that describes one or more threads that the bot will operate on. Can be a single object describing 1 thread, or a list of objects describing multiple threads. Meaningful attributes are:
- subreddit: The subreddit the bot will search for the the thread matching post_regex.
- post_regex: A python regex to match the reddit post your bot will scan.
- post_id: Choose a specific post to scan (instead of using the subreddit and post_regex).
- Examples:
```
export posts='[{ "subreddit": "pics", "post_regex": "Discussion thread" }, { "subreddit": "politics", "post_regex": "Daily chat" }]'
export posts='[{ "post_id": "abc123" }]'
export posts='{ "post_id": "foobar" }'
```

Configure how the bot processes the target post

reply_threshold: The minimum number of replies to a top-level comment before the bot will stop including it in the results.

Configure the bot's final output

comment_mode: Either new, which will delete the bot's previous comment and post a new one, or edit, which will edit the bot's previous comment.
interval: The interval (in seconds) the bot will wait between scans. Note: this only affects the resulting message that the bot produces. Actual scheduling is handled by the Heroku Scheduler.
mode: Either print, which will print results to the command line, or post, which will post results as a Reddit comment.

Debug options:

debug: Prints various debug statements that show the bot's progress.
answer_username: Only include answers from 1 user.
question_username: Only include questions from 1 user.
print_answers: Prints scanned answers on the command-line.
print_questions: Prints scanned questions on the command-line.

How?

How does it interact with Reddit?

The script uses PRAW to interact with reddit's API.

How does it run periodically?

The script relies on Heroku Scheduler to run the script every 10 minutes.

How does it determine who the most helpful users are?

More replies to top-level comments => more helpful.

How does it determine which questions "could use some love"?

Any question with fewer than reply_threshold replies could use some love.

nhayesroth/RedditContributionTracker