Draṣṭā (द्रष्टा) meaning, the observer
Helps forwarding Twitter messages from a public twitter handle to a Telegram channel
This bot can be used to check for recent tweets by a public twitter handle and forward it over a Telegram channel, using the Telegram bot API.
First, install the required dependencies if you haven't already installed. The last three dependencies can be installed using pip (using a terminal in this directory) as follows.
pip install -r requirements.txt
Now, create a json based config file for the program, with all required values for all API keys and usernames (put usernames without '@'). The example config file config.json.example
will help you making your own config file, make sure the config file is in json format and ends with .json
file extension. For ex: my-config.json
, /some/path/my-config.json
(default: config.json
, in the same directory as the script)
Example config.json
{
"twitter_username" : "PASTE-THE-TWITTER-USERNAME-HERE",
"twitter_apikey" : "PASTE-THE-TWITTER-API-KEY-HERE",
"twitter_api_secret" : "PASTE-THE-TWITTER-API-SECRET-HERE",
"telegram_channel" : "PASTE-THE-TELEGRAM-CHANNEL-USERNAME-HERE",
"telegram_bot_apikey" : "PASTE-THE-TELEGRAM-BOT-API-KEY-HERE",
"seek_rate" : 2,
"max_rollback" : 200,
"ratelimit_wait" : 16,
"welcome_text" : "WRITE-A-WELCOME-MESSAGE-FOR-ANYONE-WHO-STARTS-THE-TELEGRAM-BOT",
"tweet_format" : "{text}\n{url}\n{time}\n",
"reply_format" : "\u21aa <b>{mentions}</b>\n{text}\n{url}\n{time}\n",
"retweet_format" : "\ud83d\udd01 <b>{username}{mentions}</b>\n{text}\n{url}\n{time}\n"
}
Config Values
Key | Description |
---|---|
twitter_username |
Twitter username of the public handle without @ (Required) |
twitter_apikey |
Twitter developer API Key (Required) |
twitter_api_secret |
Twitter developer API Secret (Required) |
telegram_channel |
Telegram channel username (Required) |
telegram_bot_apikey |
Telegram Bot API Key (Required) |
seek_rate |
The time in minutes to wait before seeking newer tweets and upadating on telegram (default: 1) |
max_rollback |
Maximum no of previous tweets to obtain if the last tweet is not a recent one (default: 50) |
ratelimit_wait |
The time in minutes to wait before trying again when rate-limited by the Twitter server (default: 15) |
welcome_text |
Simple welcome / greeting text for the users who visit the Telegram Bot |
tweet_format |
Formatting for any normal tweet text which would be sent to the Telegram Channel |
reply_format |
Formatting for the tweet text that is a reply to some other tweet |
retweet_format |
Formatting for the tweet text that is a retweet of some other tweet |
db_name |
Database name on the Postgres server (default: test or with DATABASE_URL environment var) |
db_host |
Postgres server hostname / Ip address (default: localhost or with DATABASE_URL environment var) |
db_port |
Postgres server port number (default: 5432 or with DATABASE_URL environment var) |
db_user |
Username for authentication on Postgres server (default: user or with DATABASE_URL environment var) |
db_password |
Password for authentication on Postgres server (default: pass or with DATABASE_URL environment var) |
Next, Make sure the PostgreSQL server is setup with a username and password and it's running (if you want to use the database).
The bot can be configured to use the database server either by hardcoding the values, or through defining DATABASE_URL
as environment variable which holds the URI for the postgresql database.
The format for URI for DATABASE_URL
should be like,
postgres://<user>:<password>@<hostname>:<port>/<database>
With all setup, start the bot feeding the path of your config file,
python TwitterDrasta.py --config /some/path/my-config.json
OR
python TwitterDrasta.py --config my-config.json
Running using the DATABASE_URL
environment variable on the same line,
DATABASE_URL="postgres://<user>:<password>@<hostname>:<port>/<database>" python TwitterDrasta.py --config my-config.json
The bot is already compatible with heroku dynos, and this repository already contains files for heroku/python buildpack, requirements.txt
, runtime.txt
and Procfile
.
Just create a config file as told above and update the config filename in Procfile
arguments (default filename: config.json
) and push the contents to heroku git.
This operations is not automatic and it requires a configured PostgreSQL Server running. Make sure DATABASE_URL
is defined in the environment variables or the database configurations are hardcoded into the script.
And, this operation may take a lot of time, if the no of tweets to be dug are high.
To dig and update last N no of tweets,
python TwitterDrasta.py --config my-config.json -g N
To dig and update all possible tweets,
python TwitterDrasta.py --config my-config.json -w
To run the bot in debug mode, just pass the flag -d
or --debug
in the arguments.
python TwitterDrasta.py --debug --config my-config.json
All kinds of contributions towards the improvement and enhancement of this project are welcome. Any valuable pull request for fixing an issue or enhancing the project are welcome. You can even help by reporting bugs and creating issues for suggestions and ideas related to new improvements and enhancements.
This project is under the MIT License