+++ title = "El Monitorro" sort_by = "weight" +++

El Monitorro

El Monitorro is RSS, Atom and JSON feed reader as a Telegram bot.

It's available at @el_monitorro_bot.

Usage

Commands

/start - show the bot's description and contact information

/subscribe url - subscribe to feed

/unsubscribe url - unsubscribe from feed

/list_subscriptions - list your subscriptions

/help - show available commands

/set_timezone - set your timezone. All received dates will be converted to this timezone. It should be offset in minutes from UTC. For example, if you live in UTC +10 timezone, offset is equal to 600

/get_timezone - get your timezone

/set_template url template - set a template for all received items for the specified subscription. All new updates will be converted to the format defined by this subscription. Supported fields you can use for templates:
- bot_feed_name - name of the feed
- bot_feed_link - url of the feed
- bot_item_name - name of the item
- bot_item_link - url of the item
- bot_item_description - description of the item
- bot_date - publication date of the feed

Example: /set_template https://www.badykov.com/feed.xml {{bot_feed_name}}

    {{bot_item_name}}

    {{bot_date}}

    {{bot_item_link}}

Also, there are some helpers for templates:
- `substring` helper that can be used to limit the number of characters. For example, {{substring bot_item_description 100}}
- `create_link` helper. This helper creates an html link. For example, {{create_link bot_item_name bot_item_link}} or {{create_link "custom_name" bot_item_link}}
- `italic` helper. Usage: {{italic bot_item_description}}
- `bold` helper. Usage:  {{bold bot_item_name}}

/get_template url - get a template for the subscription

/remove_template url - remove the template

/set_global_template - set global template. This template will be used for all subscriptions. If the subscription has its own template, the subscription template will be used. See /set_template for available fields.

/remove_global_template - remove global template

/get_global_template - get global template

/get_filter url - get a filter for the subscription

/set_filter url filter - set filter, for example, /set_filter https://www.badykov.com/feed.xml telegram,bots. You'll start receiving posts only containing words in the filter. Use `!word` to stop receiving messages containing the specified `word`. You can combine regular filter words with ! filter words. For example, `!bot,telegram`

/remove_filter url - remove filter

/set_global_filter filter - set global filter

/get_global_filter - get a global filter

/remove_global_filter - remove global filter

/info - shows the number of subscriptions and chats. it's available only for the admin (`ADMIN_TELEGRAM_ID`)

/set_content_fields url fields - changes content hash fields of the specified feed. it's available only for the admin (`ADMIN_TELEGRAM_ID`).
Example: /set_content_fields https://www.badykov.com/feed.xml author,title

By default content hash is calculated from title and url.

Available fields:
    - link
    - title
    - publication_date
    - guid
    - description
    - author

/toggle_preview_enabled - disable or enable previews

/get_preview_enabled - check if previews are enabled for the current chat. by default, previews are enabled

Common info

• Feed updates check interval is 1 minute.
• Unread items delivery interval is 1 minute.
• The number of subscriptions is limited to 20.

The bot works in private chats, groups and channels. A couple of channels created with el monitorro:

• https://t.me/emacs_posts - Emacs News and Posts
• https://t.me/metacritic_tv - Latest Tv Show Metascores on Metacritic

Setup

Manual setup

You can deploy your instance of el_monitorro by:

1. Set postgres db url (DATABASE_URL) and telegram bot token (TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN) to .env file in the root directory. For example:

DATABASE_URL=postgres://admin:pass@localhost/el_monitorro
TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN=MYTOKEN

2. Setup database by running:

diesel database setup

You'll need diesel-cli for this

3. Start the bot

• Start the command bot

RUST_LOG=info RUST_BACKTRACE=1 cargo run --bin el_monitorro

• Start the sync binary

RUST_LOG=info RUST_BACKTRACE=1 cargo run --bin sync

• Start the delivery binary

RUST_LOG=info RUST_BACKTRACE=1 cargo run --bin deliver

• If you don't want to store all feed items that were synced and feeds without any subscriptions, start the cleaner binary

RUST_LOG=info RUST_BACKTRACE=1 cargo run --bin cleaner

Running all services from a single binary

Set ALL_BINARIES to run all binaries (clean, commands, deliver, sync) in the same binary:

ALL_BINARIES=true

Configuration

All configuration is done through env variables

Deployment suggestions

It's recommended to use a self hosted PostgreSQL instance but if it's not possible there are free services that can host it fo you:

• https://supabase.com 500mb db, up to 60 connections
• https://yugabyte.com, 10gb db, up to 10 connections
• https://bit.io, 3gb

Using docker image

The image is published on docker hub under ayratbadykov/el_monitorro. It accepts additional env variables:

• SETUP_DB - if this variable is not empty, diesel database setup is run. It creates DB and runs migrations.
• RUN_MIGRATION - if this variable is not empty, diesel migration run is run. It just runs migrations.
• BOT_BINARY - depending on this variable, docker container will run one of four binaries. Possible values are commands, sync, deliver, cleaner. To run all services in the main binary, set:

RUN_MIGRATION=true
BOT_BINARY=commands
ALL_BINARIES=true

Run the docker container:

docker run --env-file ./.env --network host -t ayratbadykov/el_monitorro:latest

Notes:

• --network host is used so the docker container can access a host network if you're running Postgres on the same machine

You can check out an example of docker-compose file in the root directory of the project.

Creating a docker image from the latest master branch

Run the following command in the el_monitorro directory to build the image from the master branch:

docker build ./ -t ayratbadykov/el_monitorro:latest