As inspired by the bots on Reddit that respond to certain words, I’ve thrown together this code which allows anyone to set up their own response bot.

There is a bit more detail on Github, but in summary you can set your own trigger word and responses, and you have two modes of operation, “Exclude” which is the default and covers every community you’re federated with (and allows moderators of a community to PM the bot to exclude it) and “Include”, where you can pick a single community for the bot to be active in.

This is really early days and rough, but should work at the most basic level. Anyone who can provide some ideas/feedback/improvements - I’m totally open to them.

And to prove it works, I’m running Legolas Bot. Any comment you make below with the word “legolas” in will get a response (probably).

Small updates to reduce spaminess - will only reply to top level comments now.

Edit: Little updates include customisable polling rates and the ability to tag the comment creators name in a response.

  • DemigodrickOPA
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    edit-2
    5 months ago

    It’s in json format so in reality it’s very little data. There’s no way (that I know of) to grab only “new” comments - I don’t think the lemmy api has anything like that.

    Even if you put seen comments in a db you’ve still got to pull them to check if they’ve been seen or not which defeats the object.

    25 every 5 seconds might be a touch overkill too but it does stop the bot missing any comments. I can certainly move them to variables that can be set in the env file/docker.

    Edit to add: if it is locked down to one community then yes its way overkill, so will add them as variables and update docs to reflect.

    • keepthepace@slrpnk.net
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      5 months ago

      I see, thanks. I guess at one point if it becomes problematic, instances can add hooks or light-weight calls.

      • DemigodrickOPA
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        5 months ago

        I’ve pushed the change so operators can change those values in the env file or via docker. Btw let me know if you do start work on the megathread thing, it does pose an interesting challenge in terms of structuring posts and handling that data.

    • threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      5 months ago

      There’s no way (that I know of) to grab only “new” comments - I don’t think the lemmy api has anything like that.

      Huh, that’s surprising. The desktop web interface and some apps (Connect) already show the number of new comments on a post:

      1000002280

      Seems strange that there is no way to identify which comments these are in the API. Might be a good feature request to propose for the Lemmy devs.

      • DemigodrickOPA
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        5 months ago

        I could entirely be wrong, but I dont see anything obvious in the api that indicates this is a function of the api. You could potentially use markPostAsRead after scanning each comment, but I don’t see a way of pulling only new unread comments after that. Would love to be proven wrong though :)

        • nutomic@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          5 months ago

          You can call https://lemmy.ml/api/v3/comment/list?limit=20&sort=New&type_=All. In general I suggest trying things on the website and then checking in browser console which api endpoints it calls.

          • DemigodrickOPA
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            edit-2
            5 months ago

            Thanks, this doesn’t pull only unread comments - if I pull the latest 5 comments and then mark those overarching posts as read, I get this:

            2024-02-02 09:52:11,278 - INFO - Requesting API Request.GET /comment/list
            2024-02-02 09:52:11,507 - INFO - Requesting API Request.POST /post/mark_as_read
            Post ID = 9335073
            Comment ID = 6915381
            2024-02-02 09:52:11,629 - INFO - Requesting API Request.POST /post/mark_as_read
            Post ID = 9007864
            Comment ID = 6915380
            2024-02-02 09:52:11,742 - INFO - Requesting API Request.POST /post/mark_as_read
            Post ID = 9319139
            Comment ID = 6915382
            2024-02-02 09:52:11,916 - INFO - Requesting API Request.POST /post/mark_as_read
            Post ID = 9334778
            Comment ID = 6915379
            2024-02-02 09:52:12,100 - INFO - Requesting API Request.POST /post/mark_as_read
            Post ID = 9283396
            Comment ID = 6915378
            

            If I then pull the 5 latest comments again:

            2024-02-02 09:52:12,238 - INFO - Requesting API Request.GET /comment/list
            2024-02-02 09:52:12,380 - INFO - Requesting API Request.POST /post/mark_as_read
            Post ID = 9335073
            Comment ID = 6915381
            2024-02-02 09:52:12,521 - INFO - Requesting API Request.POST /post/mark_as_read
            Post ID = 9007864
            Comment ID = 6915380
            2024-02-02 09:52:12,673 - INFO - Requesting API Request.POST /post/mark_as_read
            Post ID = 9319139
            Comment ID = 6915382
            2024-02-02 09:52:12,835 - INFO - Requesting API Request.POST /post/mark_as_read
            Post ID = 9334778
            Comment ID = 6915379
            2024-02-02 09:52:12,977 - INFO - Requesting API Request.POST /post/mark_as_read
            Post ID = 9283396
            Comment ID = 6915378
            

            Which is the same 5 comments - so what I’m looking for is a way to pull only previously “unseen” comments - that would reduce the amount of data returned from the api each time i check the list if there was only 1 or 2 comments rather than returning all 25.

            Apps can indicate that there are new unread comments on a post, but I assume they’re not doing this via the api and its a UI thing to do with caching?

            I may not have explained myself clearly here, though!

            • nutomic@lemmy.ml
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              5 months ago

              On GET /api/v3/post/list there is a field posts[0].unread_comments which the ui uses, probably based on mark as read endpoint. But that doesnt give you the comments themselves. So I think its better to call /api/v3/comment/list like once a minute, the amount of data returned is nothing to worry about. Still if you want to minimize it, call with limit=1 and compare the comment to see how many you missed in between, then make additional requests for those comments you dont have yet.