Reddit-snooper is designed to a simple but powerful interface to talk to Reddit. Reddit represents all of its objects in JSON natively which makes javascipt a good choice for building a bot.
snooper.watcher.getCommentWatcher('all')
.on('comment', function(comment) {
console.log('/u/' + comment.data.author + ' posted a comment: ' + comment.data.body)
snooper.api.post(...) // leave a reply
}npm install reddit-snooper --savevar Snooper = require('reddit-snooper')
snooper = new Snooper(
{
// credential information is not needed for snooper.watcher
username: 'reddit_username',
password: 'reddit password',
app_id: 'reddit api app id',
api_secret: 'reddit api secret',
user_agent: 'OPTIONAL user agent for your bot',
automatic_retries: true, // automatically handles condition when reddit says 'you are doing this too much'
api_requests_per_minute: 60 // api requests will be spread out in order to play nicely with Reddit
})All you need to get up and running is obtain an api_id and an api_secret. Both can be created on the Reddit app console
- Create (or log into) a reddit account
- Navigate to the authorized applications console
- Select 'create another app...' at the bottom
- Fill in the name, description and click on 'script', put in anything for the redirect uri, its not needed and you can change it later if you want to
- Copy down the 'secret' that is your api_secret, the 14 character string by the name of your app is your app_id
- Use these values and your credentials to configure the snooper
Reddit watchers are event emitters that trigger when new things happen on the website, Right now you can watch for:
- new comments across the website or on a specific subreddit
- new posts across the website or on a specific subreddit
- post or comment is gilded (website or subreddit)
- new posts reaching the first x pages of different listings (hot, top_24, top_day, controversial, rising) across the website or subreddit
notify when a new comment is posted
snooper.watcher.getCommentWatcher('subreddit') // blank argument or 'all' looks at the entire website
.on('comment', function(comment) {
// comment is a object containing all comment data
console.log('comment was posted by: ' + comment.data.author)
console.log('contents ' + comment.data.body)
// or
console.log(comment)
})
.on('error', console.error)notify when a new post is posted
snooper.watcher.getPostWatcher('subreddit') // blank argument or 'all' looks at the entire website
.on('post', function(post) {
// comment is a object containing all comment data
console.log('post was posted by: ' + post.data.author)
console.log(post)
})
.on('error', console.error)notify when something is gilded
snooper.watcher.getGildedWatcher('subreddit') // blank argument or 'all' looks at the entire website
.on('item', function(item) {
// comment is a object containing all comment data
console.log('user: ' + post.data.author + ' has been gilded')
console.log(item)
})
.on('error', console.error)notify when a new post reaches a specific listing (eg. the front page)
let options = {
listing: 'hot', // 'hot' OR 'rising' OR 'controversial' OR 'top_day' OR 'top_hour' OR 'top_month' OR 'top_year' OR 'top_all'
limit: 50 // how many posts you want to watch? if any of these spots get overtaken by a new post an event will be emitted, 50 is 2 pages
}
snooper.watcher.getListingWatcher('subreddit' or 'all', options)
.on('item', function(item) {
console.log("new item in listing " + item)
})
.on('error', console.error)notify when a new post is posted (on a user's multi subreddit)
snooper.watcher.getMultiWatcher('username', 'multi')
.on('post', function(post) {
// comment is a object containing all comment data
console.log('post was posted by: ' + post.data.author)
console.log(post)
})
.on('error', console.error)snooper.watcher.getCommentWatcher("all")
.on("comment", function (comment) {
// only reply if the comment contains a factorial
let match = comment.data.body.match("[0-9]+!")
if (match) {
// post a reply, if you have automatic_retries set to true this comment will make
// it through even if it takes 10+ minutes ('you are doing this too much!') otherwise
// an error will be thrown
snooper.api.post("/api/comment", {
api_type: "json",
text: match[0] + " = " + factorial(+match[0].substring(0, match[0].length -1)),
thing_id: comment.data.name
}, function (err, statusCode, data) {
if (!err) console.log('just replied to comment: ' + comment.data.name)
})
}
})
.on("error", console.error)
// when you are done
// commentWatcher.close()snooper.watcher.getGildedWatcher('all')
.on('item', function(err, data) {
... coming soon
})// also coming soon, this is really easy to implement with setTimeout this is different than just downloading the front 2 pages since it also triggers an event when the front 2 pages change
snooper.watcher.getListingWatcher('gifs', {
listing: 'top_day', // look at the top posts of the day
limit: 50 // 2 pages (25 per page)
})
.on('item', function(post) { // post will be a json object containing all post information
let urlmatch = post.data.url.match('\.([a-zA-Z]+$)')
// filter out stickied posts
if (!post.data.stickied && post.kind === 't3') {
request(post.data.url).pipe(fs.createWriteStream("./gifs/"+post.data.title.split('\"').join('')+urlmatch[0]))
}
})// start watching for new posts to r/pics
snooper.watcher.getPostWatcher('pics')
.on('post', function(post) { // post will be a json object containing all post information
// check if its a link post (t3, definitions found on reddit api page)
// also make sure there is an image link
let urlmatch = post.data.url.match('\.([a-zA-Z]+$)')
if (post.kind === 't3' && urlmatch) {
request(post.data.url).pipe(fs.createWriteStream("gifs/"+post.data.title+urlmatch[0]))
}
})
.on('error', console.error)Snooper's api component is an agnostic wrapper around Reddit's rest API that handles retries, rate limit throttling and Reddit's different response codes.
In order to use the api head over to the Reddit API Documentation. All of the api methods use one of the 5 HTTP methods (GET, POST, PATCH, PUT, DELETE) which map to the 5 different snooper.api methods.
// endpoint: api endpoint ex: 'api/v1/me' or '/api/v1/me/karma/' (listed on api documentation)
// data: JSON data, dependent on the request which is specified in the docs
// NOTE: the function .get is used for api calls that use HTTP GET, you can find the method each api endpiont uses on (you guessed it) the reddit api docs
// HTTP GET
snooper.api.get(endpoint, data, function(err, responseCode, responseData) {
if (err) {
return console.error("api request failed: " + err)
}
console.log("API reponded")
console.log("status: " + respnoseCode) // http status codes
console.log("data: " + responseData)
})
// HTTP POST
snooper.api.post(endpoint, data, function(err, responseCode, responseData) {
//...
})
// HTTP PATCH
snooper.api.patch(endpoint, data, function(err, responseCode, responseData) {
//...
})
// HTTP PUT
snooper.api.put(endpoint, data, function(err, responseCode, responseData) {
//...
})
// HTTP DELETE
snooper.api.delete(endpoint, data, function(err, responseCode, responseData) {
//...
})
// gets an api token
snooper.api.get_token(function(err, token) {
console.log(token)
})Note: new accounts get little to no posting privileges (1 comment or post per 5 minutes or more) if you dont have any karma. If you just want to play around with the api I recommend using an active account.
check how much karma your bot has
snooper.api.get('api/v1/me/karma', {}, function(err, statusCode, data) {
console.log("I have " + data.karma + " karma")
})post a comment
snooper.api.post("/api/comment", {
api_type: "json",
text: "Hello World"
thing_id: comment.data.name
}, function (err, statusCode, data) {
if (!err) console.log('just replied to comment: ' + comment.data.name)
})I highly doubt your bot is over 18 years of age
snooper.api.patch('/api/v1/me/prefs/', {
over_18: false
}, function(err, statusCode, data) {
})activate turbo mode doubling performance (kidding)
snooper.api.post('api/v1/gold/give', {
months: 1,
username: 'juicypasta'
}, function(err, statusCode, data) {
})- Support for multiple accounts
- Convenience methods for commonly used api requests
- Object model for api items (User, Subreddit, Post, Comment, etc.)
- Watchers for everything
- private messages
- replies
- new post reaching the front page (configurable to different pages/ # of pages)