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telegram-lunchbot

A telegram bot written in python. The purpose is to collect lunch menus and paste them in a channel for speeding up decision making. In it's current state it is designed to be hosted on a Raspberry Pi. Detailed article will be published and linked that explains the code logic.

Install on Raspberry Pi

  1. Create a folder on your Pi. Prefferably /home/pi/LunchBot/
  2. Download all the files and the MenuFiles folder into the path described above.
  3. Install all python modules necessary using pip3. Open terminal and execute these commands:
  • sudo pip3 install beautifulsoup4
  • sudo pip3 install requests
  1. Make the .py files executable: open terminal, go to your folder (cd LunchBot), and execute the following:
  • sudo chmod +x LM_Bot.py
  • sudo chmod +x LM_fetchMenus.py
  1. Set up a period for fetchMenus to run using CRON. Here's a detailed explanation how to schedule scripts on LINUX: h https://www.howtogeek.com/101288/how-to-schedule-tasks-on-linux-an-introduction-to-crontab-files/
  • EXAMPLE: since most restaurants post their daily lunch menu on facebook up until 11am, I scheduled LM_fetchMenus.py to run every weekday at 11:10am by adding this line to the CRON file: 10 11 * * 1-5 /home/pi/LunchBot/LM_fetchMenus.py
  1. Set up a time when the Bot logic should start and stop using CRON:
  • The bot is usually used between 11:30am and 12:30pm, therefore it makes sense for the logic to run in this timeframe. To start the Bot, this line was added to CRON file in my case: 25 11 * * 1-5 /home/pi/LunchBot/LM_Bot.py
  • To stop the Bot at 12:35, this line is added to CRON: 35 12 * * 1-5 kilall -9 LM_Bot.py
  1. That's it, you're all set!

Seting up the Bot for the first time

  1. Head to https://core.telegram.org/bots#6-botfather, follow the steps described there and setup your bot.
  2. Once you have a unique bot token copy it, edit LM_Bot.py, head to line 159 and paste the token between the ''s