🍴 Mensa UKON

Inofficial Telegram bot to access the canteen plan of the Uni Konstanz (and all other SZ canteens). Currently, it uses the endpoint that was used for the old canteen website, sooo beware of breaking functionality. The project is structured into bot/command-line and library, so you can choose what you want to use. Below you will find instructions on how to run/deploy the bot (it's primarily for me that I can remember where the heck I host the bot currently).

⚙ Install

The library/bot depends on a couple of packages and is only tested with Python >=3.6. Currently the project uses Pipenv to manage dependencies (so, e.g. Heroku is able to install them automatically). I'm currently in the process of streamlining installation and sync of requirements between Pipfile and setup.py (so that it can be distributed as a library). For now it is "synced" manually.

Anyway, make sure you are running at least Python 3.5.

# Locate source folder
$ cd mensa_ukon
# Install Pipenv (if you don't have already)
$ pip3 install pipenv
# Dependency and bot/script installation
$ pipenv install
# ... which will install the dependencies of the package located in the current folder

🎉 Library Usage

The library can be used as is or through the script that gets installed.

>>> from mensa_ukon import Mensa
>>> m = Mensa()
>>> m.retrieve()
[(Location("mensa_giessberg", "Uni", "giessberg"), {...}), (Location("themenpark_abendessen", "Themenpark & Abendessen", "themenpark"), {...})]

A command-line script is automatically installed by setuptools:

$ mensa

Help is available via the --help flag.

🤖 Telegram Bot

The Telegram bot uses the library to access the canteen plan of the Uni Konstanz. It has several commands (shown via \help command) to retrieve specific/all meals on different days of the week.

🎛 Configure

The bot can (and has to) be configured in the file .env. A sample config file is provided as .env-sample. Be sure that this file is located in the working directory of the bot, i.e., the directory where you will run the bot script. If you don't have such a file when running the bot, make sure that all variables you need are already defined in the environment! For example, use an external script to populate variables. Filling in your Telegram Bot API Token is the minimum you have to configure.

🏃 Run

$ pipenv shell # to activate the environmet if it got deactivated
Loading .env environment variables…
Spawning environment shell (/usr/local/bin/bash). Use 'exit' to leave.
[...]
$ mensa_bot

You can see available command line arguments/options via the --help flag.

🚒 Systemd

A simple template file for systemd is included: etc/mensabot@.service. Before you copy it, you have to read it! Once you made sure the file looks to fit your needs, you have to place it (or symlink it) to /etc/systemd/system/mensabot@.service. Then you can enable the service.

For example, to enable the unit for the user ubuntu, with a working directory of /home/ubuntu/mensa_ukon and the executable installed to /home/ubuntu/.local/bin/mensa_bot:

$ systemctl enable mensabot@ubuntu.service

Then you can start/stop/restart the bot:

$ systemctl start mensabot@ubuntu
$ systemctl restart mensabot@ubuntu
$ systemctl stop mensabot@ubuntu

Logs are handled using syslog and can be retrieved by systemd's journalctl. You can use journalctl -u mensabot@ubuntu to read the logs. -f sets the log to follow (like tail -f).

☁️ Heroku

Heroku currently provides a free tier where the bot is able to run just fine. Create an account and follow the guide until "View Logs". Then your bot should already be able to reply to messages.

For example, after installing the Heroku CLI, to something like this:

$ cd mensa_bot
$ heroku login # do the login
$ heroku create # this also adds the correct remote for git

Now configure your .env file locally. Then install heroku-config plugin and push your config to your application.

$ heroku plugins:install heroku-config
$ heroku config:push
$ heroku labs:enable runtime-dyno-metadata -a YOUR_APP_NAME

Now your app should be ready for the bot code:

$ git push heroku master
$ heroku ps:scale web=1
$ heroku logs -t

💻 Development

Development libraries are specified in Pipfile under [dev-packages]. If you want to develop either the library or the bot, simply run pipenv install --dev to install all dev and runtime dependencies.

🔍 Running tests

Tests are written using pytest and can be run by: pipenv run python setup.py test. The test will automatically install pytest-runner if it is not installed already.

Sadly, the library has not many tests for now 😢.

💪 TODO

Library to PyPi?
subscription feature (daily meals for configured days of week)
more tests (investigate what tox & nose are for)
simplify _mensa_plan method
development workflow up-to-date, c.f. pypa/pipenv #1263

enplotz / mensa_ukon