A plug-in based telegram bot

It is recommended to use a virtualenv for Skybeard. Create and activate the virtual environment with

virtualenv venv
source venv/bin/activate

then install the base requirements with

pip install -r requirements.txt

You will then need to make a config.py. An example config.py is provided so you can simply:

cp config.py.example config.py

This method is currently in beta. It requires docker-compose.

cp docker-compose.yml.example docker-compose.yml

then replace YOUR_TOKEN_GOES_HERE in docker-compose.yml with your token. Then run

docker-compose up --build

And skybeard will be (hopefully) running!

To run skybeard define your key in the environment variable $TG_BOT_TOKEN or as an argument with -k and run main.py. this can be done easily e.g.:

./main.py -k 99121185:RUE-ObViouSlyFakeKeyTHaThaSbEEnmad 

To test that your skybeard is running out of the box, use the test config like so:

./main.py -k 99121185:RUE-ObViouSlyFakeKeyTHaThaSbEEnmadEuP -c config.tests.yml

and type /help to see the commands available.

Skybeard source documentation: http://skybeard-2.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

Skybeard wears many beards. The bot will automatically load any "beard" (a plug-in) that is placed in the beards folder. Beards are typically structured like so:

beards
|
|___my_beard
    |    config.yml
    |    requirements.txt
    |    setup_beard.py
    |___python
        |___my_beard
            |   __init__.py
    |
    |___docs
        |    README
        |    ...

In this example the myBeard folder containts a requirements.txt for any additonal dependencies so they can be pipped, a config.py file for configuration of the beard and settings and the __init__.py which contains the class that that is the interface between the plug-in and skybeard. This interface class inherits from skybeard.beards.BeardChatHandler which handles the mounting of the plug-in, registering of commands etc, and also the telepot.aio.helper.ChatHandler.

The folder can also contain any other python modules and files that are needed for the plugin.

Creating a new beard requires knowledge of the telepot telegram API, see: http://telepot.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

The quickest way to make a new beard is to use the utility script utils/newbeard.py which creates the folder structure and basic files.

$ utils/newbeard.py foo_beard
$ tree foo_beard
foo_beard
├── python
│   └── foo_beard
│       └── __init__.py
├── README.txt
└── setup_beard.py

2 directories, 3 files

The main part of the code is in python/beard_name/__init__.py.

An example async plug-in that would echo the user's message would look like this:

class Echo(BeardChatHandler):

    __userhelp__ = """A simple echo beard. Echos whatever it is sent."""
 
    __commands__ = [
        #(condition/command, callback coro, help text)
        (Filters.text, 'echo', 'Echos everything said by anyone.'),
        ('hello', 'say_hello', 'Greets the user'),
    ]

    async def echo(self, msg):
        await self.sender.sendMessage(msg['text'])

    async def say_hello(self, msg):
        name = msg['from']['first_name']
        await self.sender.sendMessage('Hello {}!'.format(name))

This plug-in will greet the user when they send "/hello" to Skybeard and will also echo back any text the user sends.

__userhelp__ is a brief string used to generate the bot's help message. __commands__ is a list of tuples. the 0th element of each tuple gives a condition, such as a filter, or a command string (without the slash). The 1st element is the function that is called when the condition is met, and the 2nd element is the help text which, along with __userhelp__ is used to generate the help message (such as when the user types "/help").

See the examples folder for examples of callback functionality, timers, and regex predication.