making a bot with GAE and python - やる気のないブログ(A boring diary)

# try.py
import tweepy

consumer_key        = 'your consumer key'
consumer_secret     = 'your consumer secret'
access_token        = 'your access token'
access_token_secret = 'your access token secret'

auth = tweepy.OAuthHandler(consumer_key, consumer_secret)
auth.set_access_token(access_token, access_token_secret)
api = tweepy.API(auth_handler=auth)

api.update_status('test with tweepy')

execute it.

% python try.py

check the twitter. you can see your post like this if you succeeded.

make a bot

make a bot from try.py.

the features of a bot i made are

i used forecast api of livedoor, "weather hacks".
- http://weather.livedoor.com/weather_hacks
it tweets the forecast of tokyo, japan.
it parses xml with "xml.dom.minidom"

# main.py
from xml.dom import minidom
import urllib2
import re
import tweepy

consumer_key        = 'your consumer key'
consumer_secret     = 'your consumer secret'
access_token        = 'your access token'
access_token_secret = 'your access token secret'

auth = tweepy.OAuthHandler(consumer_key, consumer_secret)
auth.set_access_token(access_token, access_token_secret)
api = tweepy.API(auth_handler=auth)

xdoc = minidom.parse( urllib2.urlopen( 'http://weather.livedoor.com/forecast/webservice/re
st/v1?city=63&day=today' ) )

telop = xdoc.getElementsByTagName( 'telop' )[ 0 ].firstChild.data
date  = xdoc.getElementsByTagName( 'forecastdate' )[ 0 ].firstChild.data
description = re.sub( '\.\.\..*$', '...', xdoc.getElementsByTagName( 'description' )[ 0 ].
firstChild.data )

result = telop + ' ' + date + ' ' + description

api.update_status(result)

execute it.

% python main.py

check the twitter. you can see the forecast post like this if you succeeded.

set a bot on GAE

after making a bot, you need to set it on GAE. and you need to get GAE to execute your bot periodically with cron.

getting GAE account

i'll skip explaining how to get GAE account because many explanation pages already exist.

go to google.

download and set SDK

first, you need to download SDK. you can get here

http://code.google.com/intl/en/appengine/downloads.html

in my case, i downloaded SDK for linux.

secondary, unzip it and set it at /usr/local

% unzip google_appengine_1.4.3.zip
% mv google_appengine /usr/local/google_appengine

just in case, check the GAE SDK tool path with which command.

% which appcfg.py
/usr/local/google_appengine/appcfg.py

register new application for a bot

you need to register new application for a bot.

https://appengine.google.com/

click the "Create Application". "Application Identifier" and "Application Title" are ok what you like. in my case, i entered "forecasthoge" for both item.

set new application

make directory for your bot on linux. the directory name need to be the same as GAE application name you got the above. and place a bot program(main.py) there.

% mkdir ~/work/forecasthoge
% cd ~/work/forecasthoge
% mv ~/work/main.py .

and you need to create app.yaml and cron.yaml. app.yaml is the configure file of your GAE application. cron.yaml is the configure file of cron.

i'll skip explaining their detail. if you want to know them, check the documents.

i made them like these.

app.yaml

application: forecasthoge
version: 1
runtime: python
api_version: 1

handlers:
- url: /.*
  script: main.py

cron.yaml

cron:
- description: cron job name
  url: /.*
  schedule: every 1 hours

your bot will be executed every 1 hour.

a duplicated post will be prevented by twitter. so almost fresh forecast will be tweeted soon after the "Weather hacks" updates. this is truly bad tips. you need not to follow this.

and also you need to prepare "tweepy" for GAE.

( there might be the way to use it without deploying? but i'm not sure the way, so i decided to deploy it. )

there are many way to get tweepy. in my case, i created tweepy clone with git. just only the tweepy direcotry in tweepy is necessary, so copy it in GAE application directory.

% cd ~/work
% git clone git://github.com/joshthecoder/tweepy.git
% cp -r ./tweepy/tweepy ~/work/forecasthoge/

could be ok to use tweepy that be installed by easy_install ( in my case, /usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/tweepy-1.7.1-py2.6.egg/tweepy ). but i haven't tried to use it, so i'm not sure yet.

now, your GAE application directory has these files.

~/work/forecasthoge/
- app.yaml
- cron.yaml
- main.py
- tweepy/

after creating necessary files, you need to deploy it. execute appcfg.py.

% cd ~/work/forecasthoge
% appcfg.py update .

your e-mail address and password of GAE will be required. enter them.

you can confirm deployed application at https://appengine.google.com/ .

that's all! if you succeed your bot tweets periodically!

other bots i made

other hint

i worried about cron when i made bot with ruby.

http://d.hatena.ne.jp/takahirox/20090523/1243086497

perhaps, GAE can resolve this problem. python GAE application with "urllib2" and your bot with ruby or other language that executed via CGI on the other sever.

python GAE application would be like this.

import urllib2

urllib2.urlopen( 'your bot URL' )

and execute it periodically with cron.yaml.

but i haven't tried it yet. so, i'm not sure yet whether it can work.

icon

i briefly made it with windows paint.

conclusion

i got how to make a bot with GAE and python. as you saw, it's very easy.

i think this is the minimum case of a making bot.

you can expand your idea to use other tweepy functions(read timeline, search timeline, get mentions and so on) and GAE functions(data store, mail and so on).