hackbot

A customizable Facebook Group embetterment robot.

Hackbot uses the Facebook Graph API to implement extra moderative features that are not currently available to group administrators. At the moment, it only supports the closing of comment threads, but it's designed to be highly extensible.

An instance of hackbot is running on Hackathon Hackers.

Installation

1. Get a Facebook access token

You'll need to set a few configuration options before using the hackbot in config.json. Add your Facebook Group ID, the refresh rate in milliseconds, and the IDs of the group's moderators to the configuration file.

To generate an access token, open up the Facebook Graph API Explorer and make sure you're using a custom application. Click "Get Access Token" and make sure the user_managed_groups and publish_actions permissions are ticked.

Click the blue "Get Access Token" in the modal. Copy the short-lived access token and navigate in your browser to the following URL:

https://graph.facebook.com/oauth/access_token?
    client_id=APP_ID&
    client_secret=APP_SECRET&
    grant_type=fb_exchange_token&
    fb_exchange_token=SHORT_LIVED_ACCESS_TOKEN

Replace APP_ID, APP_SECRET, and SHORT_LIVED_ACCESS_TOKEN with the proper values. Take the long-lived (60 day) access token in the body and save it in an environment variable named ACCESS_TOKEN. Then you should be good to go!

Keep in mind that Facebook's user IDs are unique to each application, so you'll have to find some way of finding out moderator IDs using the Graph API.

Note: This process is annoying. Please consider implementing this through a web-based flow.

2. Install dependencies

$ npm install

3. Set up Firebase

Persistence is currently done via Firebase.

Set up a Firebase datastore and export the URL and secret as environment variables:

$ export FIREBASE_SECRET='<yo-secret>'
$ export FIREBASE_URL='<firebase-url>

In your Firebase you need to add the following keys:

{
    "accessToken": "<your-fb-access-token>",
    "id": "<your-fb-group-id>",
    "mods": ["<mod-id-1>", "<mod-id-2>"]
}

4. Set up Hackbot basic

Hackbot has optional but on-by-default Twitter and MetaMind integrations. If you only wish to run the Facebook integrations you can set the following environment variable:

$ export BASIC=1

Usage

To start the hackbot, use your long-lived access token and run:

$ env ACCESS_TOKEN=[LONG_LIVED_ACCESS_TOKEN] npm start

Currently, there is no way to update the access token without restarting the hackbot. You can set the port for the HTTP server using the PORT environment variable.

To generate the docs:

$ npm run doc
$ open doc/index.html

Logs are stored in log/ and are rotated daily. To view the logs:

$ npm run log

Adding Filters

Filters are the fundamental units of extension for hackbot.

You can add thread filters under the lib/filters directory. An example closed thread filter is provided.

Filters are functions that receive an array of posts, representing a post/comment thread on the Facebook Group. Items of the array are Post objects where the first item is the original post.

If you add a filter, make sure to add its exported function to the filters array in the index file.

License & Acknowledgements

Hackbot is released under the BSD 3-Clause license. The initial prototype was made with caffeine at MHacks V by Alex Kern and Eva Zheng.