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https://github.com/muffinista/chatterbot

A straightforward ruby-based Twitter Bot Framework, using OAuth to authenticate.
https://github.com/muffinista/chatterbot

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A straightforward ruby-based Twitter Bot Framework, using OAuth to authenticate.

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README 

        
Chatterbot

===========



Hi friends, I'm finally archiving this project as of March 2023. I really enjoyed using and maintaining Chatterbot, and I hope it was helpful for other people too. ❤️



Hey! This is Chatterbot 2.0. There have been some breaking changes

from older versions of the library, and it doesn't support MySQL

anymore. If you are looking for the old version, 

you can try the [1.0 branch](https://github.com/muffinista/chatterbot/tree/1.0.2)



Chatterbot is a Ruby library for making bots on Twitter.  It's

great for rapid development of bot ideas. It handles all of the basic

Twitter API features -- searches, replies, tweets, retweets, etc. and has

a simple blacklist/whitelist system to help minimize spam and unwanted

data.



[![Build Status](https://secure.travis-ci.org/muffinista/chatterbot.png?branch=master)](http://travis-ci.org/muffinista/chatterbot)



Features

--------

* Handles search queries and replies to your bot

* Use a simple scripting language, or extend a Bot class if you need it

* Wraps the Twitter gem so you have access to the entire Twitter API

* Simple blocklist system to limit your annoyance of users

* Avoid your bot making a fool of itself by ignoring tweets with

  certain bad words



Using Chatterbot

================



Chatterbot has a [documentation

website](http://muffinista.github.io/chatterbot/). It's a

work-in-progress. You can also read the [gem

documentation](http://www.rubydoc.info/gems/chatterbot/).



Make a Twitter account

----------------------



First thing you'll need to do is create an account for your bot on

Twitter.  That's the easy part.



Run the generator

-----------------



Chatterbot comes with a script named `chatterbot-register` which will

handle two tasks -- it will authorize your bot with Twitter and it

will generate a skeleton script, which you use to implement your

actual bot.



Write your bot

--------------



A bot using chatterbot can be as simple as this:



```

exclude "http://"

blocklist "mean_user, private_user"



puts "checking my timeline"

home_timeline do |tweet|

    # i like to favorite things

    favorite tweet

end



puts "checking for replies to my tweets and mentions of me"

replies do |tweet|

  text = tweet.text

  puts "message received: #{text}"

  src = text.gsub(/@echoes_bot/, "#USER#")  



  # send it back!

  reply src, tweet

end

```



Or you can write a bot using more traditional ruby classes, extend it if needed, and use it like so:

```

  class MyBot < Chatterbot::Bot

     def do_stuff

       home_timeline do |tweet|

         puts "I like to favorite things"

         favorite tweet

       end

    end

  end

```



Chatterbot can actually generate a template bot file for you, and will

walk you through process of getting a bot authorized with Twitter.



That's it!



Chatterbot uses the the Twitter gem

(https://github.com/sferik/twitter) to handle the underlying API

calls. Any calls to the search/reply methods will return

Twitter::Status objects, which are basically extended hashes. If you

find yourself pushing the limits of Chatterbot, it's very possible

that you should just be using the Twitter gem directly.



Streaming

---------



Chatterbot used to have some basic support for the Streaming API, but

I've removed it because Twitter is removing and/or restricting access

to those APIs. If you need the Streaming API, I highly recommend using

the the [Twitter

gem](https://github.com/sferik/twitter#streaming). Chatterbot is built

on the Twitter gem, it works great, and has support for streaming.



What Can I Do?

--------------



Here's a list of the important methods in the Chatterbot DSL:



**search** -- You can use this to perform a search on Twitter:



    search("pizza") do |tweet|

      tweet "I just read another tweet about pizza"

    end



**replies** -- Use this to check for replies and mentions:



    replies do |tweet|

      reply "#USER# Thanks for contacting me!", tweet

    end



Note that the string #USER# will be replaced with the username of the

person who sent the original tweet.



**home_timeline** -- This call will return tweets from the bot's home

  timeline -- this will include tweets from accounts the bot follows,

  as well as the bot's own tweets:

  

    home_timeline do |tweet|

      puts tweet.text # this is the actual tweeted text

      favorite tweet # i like to fave tweets

    end



**direct_messages** -- This will return any DMs for the bot:



    direct_messages do |dm|

      puts dm.text



      # send a DM back to the user

      direct_message "Hey, I got your message at #{Time.now.to_s}", dm.sender

    end



**tweet** -- send a Tweet out for this bot:



    tweet "I AM A BOT!!!"



**reply** -- reply to another tweet:



    reply "THIS IS A REPLY TO #USER#!", original_tweet



**retweet** -- Chatterbot can retweet tweets as well:



```rb

  search "xyzzy" do |tweet|

    retweet(tweet.id)

  end

```



**direct_message** -- send a DM to a user:



    direct_message "I am a bot sending you a direct message", user



(NOTE: you'll need to make sure your bot has permission to send DMs)



**blocklist** -- you can use this to specify a list of users you don't

  want to interact with. If you put the following line at the top of

  your bot:

  

    blocklist "user1, user2, user3"

    

None of those users will trigger your bot if they come up in a

search. However, if a user replies to one of your tweets or mentions

your bot in a tweet, you will receive that tweet when calling the

reply method.



**exclude** -- similarly, you can specify a list of words/phrases

  which shouldn't trigger your bot. If you use the following:

  

    exclude "spam"

    

Any tweets or mentions with the word 'spam' in them will be ignored by

the bot. If you wanted to ignore any tweets with links in them (a wise

precaution if you want to avoid spreading spam), you could call:



    exclude "http://"



**followers** -- get a list of your followers. This is an experimental

  feature but should work for most purposes.



For more details, check out

[dsl.rb](https://github.com/muffinista/chatterbot/blob/master/lib/chatterbot/dsl.rb)

in the source code.



Direct Client Access

--------------------



If you want to do something not provided by the DSL, you have access

to an instance of Twitter::Client provided by the **client** method.

In theory, you can do something like this in your bot to unfollow

users who DM you:



    client.direct_messages_received(:since_id => since_id).each do |m|

        client.unfollow(m.user.name)

    end



Authorization

-------------



Before you setup a bot for the first time, you will need to register an

application with Twitter.  Twitter requires all API communication to be via an

app which is registered on Twitter. I would set one up and make it

part of Chatterbot, but unfortunately Twitter doesn't allow developers

to publicly post the OAuth consumer key/secret that you would need to

use.  If you're planning to run more than one bot, you only need to do

this step once -- you can use the same app setup for other bots too.



The helper script `chatterbot-register` will walk you through most of

this without too much hand-wringing. And, if you write a bot without

`chatterbot-register`, you'll still be sent through the authorization

process the first time you run your script.  But if you prefer, here's

sthe instructions if you want to do it yourself:



1. [Setup your own app](https://twitter.com/apps/new) on Twitter.



2. Put in whatever name, description, and website you want.



3. Take the consumer key/consumer secret values, and either run your bot, and enter them

in when prompted, or store them in a config file for your bot. (See

below for details on this).  It should look like this:



 		 ---

         :consumer_secret: CONSUMER SECRET GOES HERE

         :consumer_key: CONSUMER KEY GOES HERE



When you do this via the helper script, chatterbot will point you at

the URL in Step #1, then ask you to paste the same values as in Step #4.



Once this is done, you will need to setup authorization for the actual

bot with Twitter. At the first run, you'll get a message asking you to go

to a Twitter URL, where you can authorize the bot to post messages for

your account or not.  If you accept, you'll get a PIN number back.

You need to copy this and paste it back into the prompt for the

bot. Hit return, and you should be all set.



This is obviously a bunch of effort, but once you're done, you're

ready to go!



Configuration

-------------



Chatterbot offers a couple different methods of storing the config for

your bot:



1. Your credentials can be stored as variables in the script itself.

   `chatterbot-register` will do this for you. If your bot is using

   replies or searches, that data will be written to a YAML file.

   **NOTE** this is a bad practice for scripts that are stored in a

   source control system such as git, or are publicly available on a

   site like github.

2. In a YAML file with the same name as the bot, so if you have

   botname.rb or a Botname class, store your config in botname.yaml

3. In a global config file at `/etc/chatterbot.yml` -- values stored here

   will apply to any bots you run.

4. In another global config file specified in the environment variable

   `'chatterbot_config'`.

5. In a `global.yml` file in the same directory as your bot.  This

   gives you the ability to have a global configuration file, but keep

   it with your bots if desired.



Running Your Bot

----------------



There's a couple ways of running your bot:



Run it on the command-line whenever you like. Whee!



Run it via cron.  Here's an example of running a bot every two minutes



    */2 * * * * . ~/.bash_profile; cd /path/to/bot/;  ./bot.rb



Run it as a background process.  Just put the guts of your bot in a loop like this:



```rb

loop do

  search "twitter" do |tweet|

    # here you could do something with a tweet

    # if you want to retweet

    retweet(tweet.id)

  end



  replies do |tweet|

    # do stuff

  end



  sleep 60

end

```



Blocklists

----------



Not everyone wants to hear from your bot.  To keep annoyances to a

minimum, Chatterbot has a simple blocklist tool. Using it is as simple as:



    blocklist "mean_user, private_user"



You should really respect the wishes of users who don't want to hear

from your bot, and add them to your blocklist whenever requested.



There's also an 'exclude' method which can be used to add

words/phrases you might want to ignore -- for example, if you wanted

to ignore tweets with links, you could do something like this:



    exclude "http://"



Contributing to Chatterbot

--------------------------



Pull requests for bug fixes and new features are eagerly accepted.

Since this code is based off of actual Twitter bots, please try and

maintain compatability with the existing codebase. If you are

comfortable writing a spec for any changed code, please do so. If not,

I can work with you on that.



Copyright/License

-----------------



Copyright (c) 2018 Colin Mitchell. Chatterbot is distributed under the

MIT licence -- Please see LICENSE.txt for further details.



http://muffinlabs.com