Reddit Responder Bot

This is a small proof of concept inspired by this comment on Reddit. This application is capable of monitoring a list of subreddits for comments containing any number of trigger strings. When a comment with a matching trigger is detected, the bot will find an applicable template and respond with the template's configured response.

Prerequisites

• You will need a Reddit Account to run this application with.
• .NET 5.0 SDK
• OPTIONAL - Docker Compose

Getting the project

To get started, first clone the project with:

https://github.com/JerrettDavis/RedditTedCruzResponderBot.git

Next, jump into the newly created directory:

cd TedCruzResponderBot

Configuring the project

Once you're in the solution directory, you'll need to configure the application to use your Reddit account. To do this, you'll need an AppId and a RefreshToken. If you've never setup an app on Reddit before, check out this guide from the Reddit.NET library creators. It utilizes the AuthTokenRetriever utility within the Reddit.NET project.

Once you have your credentials, you will need to place them one of two places, depending on how you wish to run the application.

Docker

To run the application under docker, create a new filed called .env. The contents of the files will include the following:

AppId=YOUR_ID_HERE
RefreshToken=YOUR_REFRESH_TOKEN_HERE

Dotnet

To run the application from the commandline (or your IDE) using dotnet, update the AppId and RefreshToken properties in appsettings.json like so:

{
  /// ...
  
  "AppId": "YOUR_ID_HERE",
  "RefreshToken": "YOUR_REFRESH_TOKEN_HERE",
  
  /// ...
}

Configuring Monitoring

The default behavior for the application is to store its monitoring configuration in-memory. To change this configuration, you must adjust the appropriate settings in appsettings.json.

Setting Monitored Subreddits

To adjust the list of subreddits the bot should monitor, adjust the Subreddits property in appsettings.json like so:

{
  // ...

  "Subreddits": [
    "askreddit",
    "politics",
    "HydroHomies"
  ]

  // ...
}

Setting Trigger Templates

Each trigger template contains 3 standard properties:

• TemplateName - [string] - Currently unused by the application. It makes tracking templates easier.
• Triggers - [IEnumerable<string>] - A collection of strings you wish to search for.
• Response - [string] - The complete comment you want the bot to respond to triggered comments with.

To adjust the list of templates the bot uses, adjust the Templates property in appsettings.json like so:

{
  // ...
  
  "Templates": [
    {
      "TemplateName": "Agree with me",
      "Triggers": ["Isn't that right, bot?"],
      "Response": "Yup. You're 100% correct. \n\n---\n^I'm ^a ^bot, ^and ^this ^was ^an ^automated ^action."
    }
  ]
  
  // ...
}

Running the Bot from Docker

To run the bot under docker, run the following commands from the root solution directory:

docker-compose build
docker-compose up

The application should start up and start spitting out logs. To shut the application back down, close out of the session and then run:

docker-compose down

Running the Bot from the Dotnet Cli

To run the bot with the dotnet cli, run the following commands from the root solution directory:

dotnet restore
dotnet build
dotnet run --project ./src/Bot.Service

Warnings and Limitations

This application relies on the Reddit API, and as such, you're bound by Reddit's terms of service and their API access rules.

One core limitation of the Reddit API is that it only allows up to 60 requests a minute. If you are monitoring a large number of subs, it can take quite some time to consume them all. If a sub receives more than 100 comments since the last time it was traversed, you may miss some.

License

GNU GPLv3