danileo/autobot

A Telegram bot for car allocation

Autobot: A Telegram bot for car allocation

Local testing instructions

The following instructions are for Linux machines, they must be modified accordingly for Windows and Mac.

Preparation

1. Prerequisites: you need a local install of Python 3, together with the pip package manager and virtualenv;
2. Install the Google Cloud SDK outside of the project directory (if you chose to not add the gcloud executable in the PATH, substitute it in the rest of the documentation with <PATH_TO_GCLOUD_SDK>/bin/gcloud);
3. Install the Python App Engine extensions: gcloud components install app-engine-python
4. Install the Datastore emulator: gcloud components install cloud-datastore-emulator
5. From the shell, while inside the project directory, create a new Python virtual environment: virtualenv --python python3 env. The following commands must be executed from the same shell without changing location.
6. Activate the new environment: source env/bin/activate
7. Install the runtime dependencies: pip install -r requirements.txt
8. Create a config.ini file with the configuration. If you do not plan to deploy the app, you can use placeholder values:

    [DEFAULT]
    telegram_token = 000000000:0
    hook_address = /
    bot_url = 

Starting of a local testing session

1. Run the datastore emulator: gcloud beta emulators datastore start --no-store-on-disk (omit the --no-store-on-disk part if you want the datastore content to persist across the emulator restarts)
2. In another shell, initialize the needed environment variables: $(gcloud beta emulators datastore env-init). The following commands must be executed inside the shell where this command has been executed.
3. Activate the Python virtual environment: source env/bin/activate
4. If new dependencies are needed, install them: pip install -r requirements.txt
5. Run the application: python main.py

The code executed while in debugging mode is inside the if __name__ == '__main__': block. Remember that no connection to Telegram is possible while running locally (actually, that is possible, but you have to change a portion of the code and register a testing bot in Telegram), therefore, you cannot call command handlers directly. An exception is valid for simple handlers, where the mock update object is able to mimick the necessary functionality of Telegram. In this case, the answer will be printed to screen, instead of being sent to Telegram servers.

Deployment

Preparation

1. Perform the preparation steps for local testing
2. In the project folder, activate the Python virtual environment: source env/bin/activate
3. Install a local copy of the runtime dependencies: pip install -t lib -r requirements.txt

Deploy a new version of the app

1. If new dependencies have been added from the last deployment, install them from inside the project folder: pip install -t lib -r requirements.txt
2. Deploy the app: gcloud app deploy

autobot's Issues

Make the stored preferences depend on chat id

Store the chat id in the database, so that only preferences expressed in a given chat will be considered. In this way, the results will be independent across chats.

Separate main for debug and the rest of the code

The code to locally debug the bot should not be in main.py

Make /status persistent across calls

Whenever a /status command is executed, a new random pool of cars is extracted.
Make such pool persistent across calls until the stored preferences change.

Create Readme

Create a README.md file in the project to provide clarity and accessibility to the project

No local testing instructions available

There are currently no known ways to test this locally.

A set of example commands in the README would be more than enough!

Add time option to /auto and /posto command

Given that some people prefer to have launch early, while others cannot stand eating before 13.00, I suggest to add a "time" option to the /auto and /posto commands 😛

Create a /reset command

The /reset command should delete all the preferences stored in the database (for the given chat, see #5).

Add the people/car association list to /status

Provide a improved /status command

Have a /status command that shows a quick summary of the requests. Something like:

Posti auto disponibili: N (N = sum n_i where n_i number of places for car i)
Posti auto richiesti: M
Bici: P

/macchinaobici /biciomacchina are pretty ambiguous let's decide how to count them.

If N > 0 car seat association (FIFO) should be shown. It could be printed out like this:

Macchina 0: DRIVER-0, passenger-01, ..., passenger-0n
...
Macchina N: DRIVER-N, passenger-N1, ..., passenger-Nn

Just something off the top of my head. Wrote it here as a reference. To be discussed.