Grandma Bot

Grandma Bot is written in JavaScript/NodeJS and can send a randomly chosen message specified in a TXT file and send it as an SMS via the Twilio API.

Prerequisites

• Active Twilio Account

• NodeJS/npm installed on the machine you want to use

Setup

You can run the Grandma Bot in many configurations:

• Natively

• Inside a Docker container

• On a Kubernetes Cluster

• As a Cloud Function (like Azure Functions)

Needed variables

Variable	Description	Default
TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID	The SID of your Twilio account, check the Twilio Dashboard.	-
TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN	The Auth Token of your Twilio account, check the Twilio Dashboard.	-
TWILIO_PHONE_NUMBER	The phone number your messages will be send from, check the Twilio Dashboard.	-
RECEIVER_PHONE_NUMBER	The phone number which will receive your messages.	-
MIN_MSG_AMMOUNT	Minimum ammount of messages in messages.txt, more are better for the random selection.	-
PERFORM_MESSAGE_TEST	Test if messages in messages.txt are appropriate to be sent as SMS by settting this var to true.	false

Natively

Follow the steps below to setup the project to run natively on your computer.

1. Get the project's code by running git clone https://github.com/pitscher/grandma-bot.git

2. Inside the project's directory run npm install

3. Create a new file .env with the following content and fill in your data: See chapter "Needed variables" for further reference.

   TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID=<yourValueHere>
   TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN=<...>
   TWILIO_PHONE_NUMBER=<...>
   RECEIVER_PHONE_NUMBER=<...>
   MIN_MSG_AMMOUNT=<...>
   PERFORM_MESSAGE_TEST=<...>
   

4. Fill the messages.txt with your messages you want to send via SMS. One message per line. Empty lines are not permitted. Keep in mind that each message should be <159 characters to avoid splitting and multiple billing.

5. If you filled the messages.txt you can check if your input is valid by setting PERFORM_MESSAGE_TEST=true and starting the tool.

6. Start the tool with npm start

7. The bot is running and will tell you what is happening via the command line. Messages normally take a few seconds to be processed by Twilio. You're done.

Docker container

Follow the steps below to setup the project to run inside a Docker container.

1. Make sure Docker is installed on your machine and you've setup permissions correctly. Take a look at this nice guide by the DigitalOcean community to setup Docker on a Linux server.

2. Get the project's code by running git clone https://github.com/pitscher/grandma-bot.git

3. Inside the project's directory run docker build -t grandmabot:1.0 .. Docker will use the projects Dockerfile and build an image.

4. You have to provide all needed variables for the bot to function properly. You can use the docker-start.sh script from the repo to run the bot once. Fill in the values for the required variables before running the script.

5. Run the bash script ./docker-start.sh. The script takes care of executing the correct docker commands for you. You're done.

Kubernetes

Follow the steps below to setup the project to run as a cron job on a Kubernetes cluster.

1. Make sure you build an image of grandmabot and push it as a public image at DockerHub. The already mentioned guide by the DigitalOcean community is very useful if you've never done this before.

2. Check the included k8s manifests inside the kubernetes directory. You must setup your DockerHub user and image name at image: in the cronjob.yaml file.

3. Apply the manifest kubectl apply -f cronjob.yaml. You're done.

Azure Function

Comming soon.