Drawing Challenge Bot

A short bot written with nio-template.

Posts the bi-weekly drawing challenge from https://old.reddit.com/r/MLPDrawingSchool weekly to matrix rooms.

Install

drawing-challenge-bot requires matrix-nio, which supports participation in end-to-end encryption rooms! To do so, it makes use of the libolm C library. This library must be installed to allow for end-to-end encryption functionality, and unfortunately it is also required for functional message polling, so it is practically a hard required for this program.

Unfortunately, installation of this library can be non-trivial on some platforms. However, with the power of docker, dependencies can be handled with little fuss, and it is thus the recommended method of installing drawing-challenge-bot. Native installation instructions are also provided, but be aware that they are more complex.

Docker

Recommended. Follow the docker installation instructions.

Native installation

Install libolm

You can install libolm from source, or alternatively, check your system's package manager. Version 3.0.0 or greater is required.

(Optional) postgres development headers

By default, drawing-challenge-bot uses SQLite as its storage backend. This is fine for a few hundred users, but if you plan to support a much higher volume of requests, you may consider using Postgres as a database backend instead.

If you want to use postgres as a database backend, you'll need to install postgres development headers:

Debian/Ubuntu:

sudo apt install libpq-dev libpq5

Arch:

sudo pacman -S postgresql-libs

Install Python dependencies

Create and activate a Python 3 virtual environment:

virtualenv -p python3 env
source env/bin/activate

Install python dependencies:

pip install drawing-challenge-bot

Configuration

Copy the sample configuration file to a new config.yaml file.

cp sample.config.yaml config.yaml

Edit the config file. The matrix section must be modified at least.

Running

Docker

Refer to the docker run instructions.

Native installation

Make sure to source your python environment if you haven't already:

source env/bin/activate

Then simply run the bot with:

drawing-challenge-bot

By default, the bot will run with the config file at ./config.yaml. However, an alternative relative or absolute filepath can be specified after the command:

drawing-challenge-bot other-config.yaml

Usage

Invite the bot to a room and it should accept the invite and join. It will then start posting challenges.

Development

Please see CONTRIBUTING.md.