A Python-based SlackBot derived from SlackHQ's remarkable RTMBot

Getting started

• This bot uses MongoDB instead of the filesystem for persistence. You can install MongoDB locally (default) or export SCOTUSBOT_MONGO_URL with your custom connection string.

brew install mongodb
ln -sfv /usr/local/opt/mongodb/*.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents
launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.mongodb.plist

• Create a virtualenv and install the required packages.

mkvirtualenv nyt-scotusbot && pip install -r requirements.txt

• Create a bot integration for your scotusbot and get the channel ID. Then export the channel ID and the token.

export CAMPFINBOT_SLACK_CHANNEL=C012345
export CAMPFINBOT_SLACK_TOKEN=ABCEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ01234567890

• Create the log file if it doesn't exist.

touch /tmp/scotusbot.log

• Preload data for the bot. It needs to get loaded with old cases (grants and opinions) so it doesn't spam your slack channel with stuff you already know about.

python -m scotusbot.preload

• Run the bot itself.

python -m scotusbot.bot

• Tail the log to see what's going on.

tail -f /tmp/scotusbot.log

Deployment

Ubuntu Linux

• Make an Upstart script in /etc/init/scotusbot.conf and use this template.

start on runlevel [2345]
stop on runlevel [!2345]

respawn

script
  export SCOTUSBOT_SLACK_CHANNEL='C012345'
  export SCOTUSBOT_SLACK_TOKEN='xoxb-1234567890-AbcDefGhijkLmNOpQRstUvWXyz'
  export SCOTUSBOT_PRD_HOST='ec2-0-0-0-0.compute-99.amazonaws.com'
  export SCOTUSBOT_MONGO_URL='127.0.0.1:12345'
  cd /home/ubuntu/nyt-scotusbot && /home/ubuntu/.virtualenvs/nyt-scotusbot/bin/python /home/ubuntu/nyt-scotusbot/scotusbot/bot.py
end script

Heroku

• Create a heroku app. And rename it to scotusbot

heroku create
heroku apps:rename scotusbot --app oldname
git remote rm heroku
heroku git:remote -a scotusbot

• Add your MongoDB production server

heroku addons:docs mongohq

• Export the production MongoDB URL to your environment variables

SCOTUSBOT_MONGO_URL=mongodb://username:[email protected]:10011/my_app

• Preload your shiny new production server

python -m scotusbot.preload

• Set your config variables

heroku config:set SCOTUSBOT_SLACK_CHANNEL='C012345' \
SCOTUSBOT_SLACK_TOKEN='xoxb-1234567890-AbcDefGhijkLmNOpQRstUvWXyz' \
SCOTUSBOT_MONGO_URL=mongodb://username:[email protected]:10011/my_app

• Deploy code and start the bot

git push heroku master
heroku ps:scale bot=1 --app scotusbot