Lombardi is a rudimentary Slack bot that provides current and prior-season NFL statistics in response to structured natural language queries. The bot is built in Python using Slackbot and leverages data from the nflgame API in addition to other sources.

Currently, Lombardi will respond to supported queries as long as he is added to a channel and invoked using @lombardi. Lombardi will also respond to queries sent to him via direct message.

This project is very much in the alpha stage. Much refactoring and optimization is needed, but it works.

• Python 2.6 or 2.7 (may work in Python 3 but at your own risk)
• nflgame
• slackbot
• feedparser (for ESPN news headlines)

• Create a Slack bot and obtain its API token
• Clone this repository
• pip install -r requirements.txt
• Provide your API token to the application by either:
  • Creating an environment variable: export SLACKBOT_API_TOKEN='<your token here>' from a shell prompt
  • Adding API_TOKEN = '<your token here>' to the top of slackbot_settings.py
  • Creating a config.py file in the lombardi directory with apitoken = ''
• python run.py

Lombardi supports several queries "out of the box", but is very easily customizable just like [any other slackbot](link to other slackbots).

Lombardi generally follows the conventions of nflgame and slackbot. This means that a few definitions apply across the board:

• 'Season' and 'Year' are effectively interchangeable - e.g., the 2015-2016 NFL season is referred to by the year 2015. So, if you want results from January 2013 you would reference the year 2012 for that season
• Unless otherwise indicated, player names should be provided in full name format. E.g., you should use "Ben Roethlisberger" instead of "B. Roethlisberger" or something else. TODO: add more graceful error handling around invalid name entry, and more flexibilty for name entry overall.
• Unless otherwise indicated, queries are case-insensitive

The following queries are currently supported:

• Returns statistics for the top 5 players of the provided position in the provided season

Example: Top RB 2015

• Returns aggregate stats for a given player in a given season. Relevant stats are shown based on the player's position. If 'detailed' is included, week-by-week stats are shown.

Example: player stats for Ben Roethlisberger in 2015 Forthcoming

player stats for Ben Roethlisberger in 2015 detailed Forthcoming

• Returns player biographical information, including team, position, team, college, height/weight, years pro, and a link to the player's profile on NFL.com
• Player name must be provided as a full name, e.g., "Tom Brady" or "Antonio Gates"

Example: bio Antonio Gates

Name: Antonio Gates
Position:*​ TE
​Team: SD
​College:​ Kent State
​Ht/Wt: 6' 4", 255lbs
​Yrs Pro:​ 13
​Profile URL:​ http://www.nfl.com/player/antoniogates/2505299/profile

• Returns a detailed game summary for the specified game. The summary includes:
• Aggregate game statistics (score, first downs, yardages, penalty / turnover stats, punt stats, and TOP)
• A scoring summary
• Team name must be provided in abbreviated format (e.g., "CAR" or "JAC")

Example: Forthcoming....

• Returns the top 5 headlines from ESPN NFL

Example: Forthcoming

• Returns the top 5 posts from /r/nfl

Example: Forthcoming

Slackbot handles the connection to Slack's servers using the provided API token, and includes support for reconnection after a connectivity loss, so theoretically this could be run on any internet-connected computer assuming all of the dependencies are installed.

I'm working on getting this running on Heroku...instructions for that will go here soon.

• Switch to using nfldb or Stattleship's API to improve query response time (which can be very long for full-season queries)
• Use api.ai to improve natural language parsing by adding support for additional queries / multiple forms of syntax for the same question

Longer term, I'd like to enhance Lombardi to serve as a control center for a fantasy football league. The biggest change will be incorporating fantasy stats in addition to NFL ones.