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Cheetah Bot for Telegram

This script lets you run a Telegram Bot that (semi-regularly) posts pictures of cheetahs and (semi-regularly) replies to comments as if it were a cheetah.

Features

  • Will post a cheetah sound or picture when trigged by every Nth message (configurable)
  • Messages with profanity or the middle finger emoji will provoke smartass responses.
  • Can be configured to only interact wiht allowlisted groups/group IDs.
  • When added to a channel, sent the message help on a channel, or DMed, it will respond with an "about me" string.
  • Configurable rate limiting to prevent accidental flooding of the group.
  • Age checking on messages to prevent spamming the group after a hiatus.
  • Support for talking to mitmproxy, if you'd like to monitor network activity.

Usage

  • Talk to @BotFather on Telegram to create a bot.
  • Copy down the API token.
  • Go to Bot Settings -> Group Privacy and click Turn Off. This will allow your bot to see messages sent to groups it is in.
  • Copy .env-SAMPLE to .env and fill out the settings. Settings are described in detail further down.
  • Add your bot to one or more groups. Make sure the group owners are cool with this!
  • Start the bot using one of the methods outlined below:

Docker Compose

  • Verify environment settings with with docker-compose config
  • docker-compose up
  • To kill, rebuild, and relaunch the container:
    • docker-compose kill; docker-compose rm -f; docker-compose build; docker-compose up -d; docker-compose logs -f

CLI

  • . .env - Read the variables from our `.env file.
  • export $(cat .env | egrep "^\w" | cut -d= -f1) - Mark those varaibles as exportable.
  • pip install -r ./requirements.txt
  • ./cheetah-bot.py - Usage arguments will be displayed.

Development mode

  • . .env - Read the variables from our `.env file.
  • export $(cat .env | egrep "^\w" | cut -d= -f1) - Mark those varaibles as exportable.
  • ./bin/devel.sh - This will start a Docker container with a bash shell. Follow the instructions on screen to proceed.
    • ./bin/run-bot.sh - Meant to be run inside of a bash shell spawned by devel.sh, this will print the environment variables you're using before running the bot and give you a chance to change them.
    • ./bin/import-mitmproxy-cert.py - Run this inside of a bash shell spawned by devel.sh` to import the mitmproxy root certificate.
  • ./bin/build.sh - Build the container only. This is called by bin/devel.sh.
  • ./bin/docker-compose-build-and-run.sh - Build and run the container with docker-compose, and tail the output.

Configuration

  • GROUP_IDS - Optional. List of group IDs (separated by spaces) where the bot should operate.
    • If unsure of the group ID, use GROUP_NAMES, and the ID will show up in the logging messages from the bot.
    • If neither this nor GROUP_NAMES are specified, then any group may add this bot.
  • GROUP_NAMES - Optional. A list of strings (separated by spaces) which are then substring matched against the name of the gorup as messages come in. Be careful with this, because test will match test, test2, and test1234, for example. Note that a string can't have a space in it, since the space is a delimiter.
  • ACTIONS - Used for rate-limiting. How many messages can be sent in a given period?
  • PERIOD - Used for rate-limiting. How long is the period in seconds?
    • Note that the queue for sending messages is refilled based on time-elapsed.
    • For example, ACTIONS=2 and PERIOD=10 means that .2 will be added to the queue every second.
    • So if a message is sent at second 0, the queue is now 1, at 1 second, it is 1.2, then 1.4 at 2 seconds, etc. until the queue maxes out at 2.
  • POST_EVERY - Posts wehn tirggered by every Nth message in the group. 100 is usually a good number.
    • Optional. If not specified, the cheetah bot will not issue any unsolicited replies.
  • POSTS_FILE - CSV File containing image comments and optional images to go with them. Defaults to ./posts.txt.
  • PROFANITY_REPLY - Set to 1 for the bot to reply to profanity it sees in channels. This can be annoying, so it's off by default.

Good Testing Practices

I'm not even sure how to unit test against Telegram, so I have manual instructions here for now:

  • Start the bot with default settings, except for...
    • POST_EVERY, which should be 2.
    • ACTIONS should be 2.
    • PERIOD should be 10.
    • e.g. POST_EVERY=2 ACTIONS=2 PERIOD=10 /mnt/bin/run-bot.sh
  • Send 2 test messages to the group, ensure the bot replies to the second message.
  • Type chee and ensure the bot replies.
  • Type an f-bomb in a message and make sure the bot catches that.
  • Type a message with the bot tagged in it and ensure it replies
    • Repeat a few times to make sure it does text AND images
  • Reply to a message from the bot in the gorup and ensure it replies
    • Repeat a few times to make sure it does text AND images
  • Spam the bot with messages until you exhaust the quota (it won't take long with these settings) and make sure it goes to sleep than wakes back up.
  • Finally, send a DM to the bot and make sure it replies.

Unit Testing

  • bin/pytest - Run unit tests. This script is just a wrapper to add lib/ into $PYTHONPATH.
    • -s - Specify -s to print contents of stdout.
    • -k string - Run only tests that match that substring
    • --log-cli-level=info - Specify to print logging messages.
      • Note that --log-cli-level=info may break some tests, and there are calls to get quota values in logging messages. I warned ya!
    • file Specify a unit test file to run

There is a great blog post about mocking over here.

Mitmproxy Support

If you'd like to send traffic through mitmproxy for testing, here's how to make that happen:

  • Make sure mitmproxy is installed
  • Edit .env and set the HTTP_PROXY and HTTPS_PROXY values to http://YOUR_IP:8080/
    • Note that YOUR_IP is NEITHER localhost NOR 127.0.0.1. It must be the local network IP of your machine, since localhost would be just the Docker container.
  • Copy the CA for mitmproxy to this directory: cp ~/.mitmproxy/mitmproxy-ca-cert.pem .
    • If this fails, try running mitmproxy once
  • Start the Docker container in devel mode: ./bin/devel.sh
  • Run the script ./bin/import-mitmproxy-cert.py inside the shell to ingest the CA for mitmproxy.
    • If this is not done, you'll see a certificate verify failed error and the bot will not run.
  • Make sure mitmproxy, mitmdump, or mitmweb is running on the host machine.
    • If it's not running, you'll see a Connection refused error and the bot will not run.

Future Features to add

  • Ability for group admins to configure limits on bot
  • Add POST_RANDOM with a percent float that maxes out at .10

Credits

  • Jan De Dobbeleer for his excellent post on how to talk to mitmproxy from a Python app in a Docker container.

Copyrights

  • The code is copyright by me, and the license is in LICENSE.
  • The images it uses are copyright via their owners.

Contact

My email is doug.muth@gmail.com. I am also @dmuth on Twitter and Facebook!