Build Slack bot to send event reminders hours before they happen

[ericlathrop]

Background

• The site runs on a Ubuntu machine in DigitalOcean
• The site is a static-site that's generated every 5-ish minutes via a cron job
• The cron job produces an events.json file with all of the event data.
• The site generation stuff is written in Node

Requirements

• It would be real convenient if the bot could run on the existing server, and use the already configured Node 8.x. It's not a deal-breaker, but there should be a good reason for picking something else.
• The bot doesn't need to be interactive
• The bot should post event reminders in one specific "upcoming events" channel, but also in a topic-specific channel if applicable (Ex. JSLou events go into #javascript)
• The posts generated by the bot should link to the event page if there is one
• The bot should only post events once
• We need to define a schedule of when it should make the posts

[KendallWeihe]

How does Louisvilletech.org store events?

Is there a file somewhere that is easily accessible? Is a third-party service used?

[ericlathrop]

When you build the site, the event data is put into /data/events.json.

[ericlathrop]

First take on a possible bot posting schedule:

• 9am for events that happen after noon the same day
• 4pm for events that happen before noon the next day "Tomorow: ..."