RXWatcher / ind-appointment-checker-bot

Telegram bot to check for appointments at IND

IND appointment checker bot for Telegram

This bot allows user to set up one or several jobs that will periodically check for appointments of a specified type at a specified IND location (migration authority of the Netherlands). It was inspired by https://github.com/Iaotle/IND-Appointment-Check.

Usage

• /add - Add a new job to watch for an appointment.
• /cancel - Cancel the current dialogue.
• /list - List all current jobs.
• /clear - Remove all current jobs from the queue.
• /help - Display help message.

Setup

Currently the bot is running as @IndAppointmentCheckerBot. It can be self-hosted after creating your own bot with @BotFather (see https://core.telegram.org/bots) in one of the following ways:

Locally

1. pip install -r requirements.txt
2. Set up your bot token as TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN environment variable.
3. python bot.py

On Heroku

1. Create your Heroku app:

   heroku create
   

   or add a Heroku remote for an existing app:

   heroku git:remote -a <your-existing-app>
   

2. Set up your bot token as TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN environment variable on Heroku:

   heroku config:set TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN=<your token>
   

3. Activate Heroku Dyno Metadata API:

   heroku labs:enable runtime-dyno-metadata
   

   or set up HEROKU_APP_NAME environment variable.
4. Deploy the code:

   git push heroku main
   

5. The bot will prevent (free-tier) dynos from sleeping by pinging itself periodically if any job is running. This may exhaust your free hours limit if jobs are running for too long. This can be disabled by passing --no-keep-awake flag to the bot by changing the Procfile.