AnthemBOT

AnthemBOT is a SlackBot that listen to Slack for countries flag emoji 🇨🇦 in the :flag-ca: format, and play the country national anthem.

How it works

The bot was created to run on a Linux board (I'm currently running it on a C.H.I.P.), and should run on most Linux distros.

The bot is made with Botkit

The bot listens to direct messages, mentions, other bots messages, in the channels where he is a member. It looks for country flag emoji (or the text version).

When a flag emoji trigger the bot, it uses the two letter country code to play a midi .mid file using TiMidity++.

For example, :flag-ca: will play the ca.mid file.

How to setup the bot

Creating the bot

First, create a new bot in your slack. We will need the token to make AnthemBOT connect to slack.

More info about bots can be found here: https://api.slack.com/bot-users

Intalling required dependencies

You will need Node.js to run the bot. Make sure that you have it installed. In the bot folder run:

npm install

Install Timidity++ and a soundfont to play the midi files:

sudo apt-get install timidity
sudo apt-get install fluid-soundfont-gm fluid-soundfont-gs

Enable the soundfont by editing the TiMidity config: sudo nano /etc/timidity/timidity.cfg

The bottom of the file should look like this, with the freepats commented out and the fluid uncommented:

# By default, try to use the instrument patches from freepats:
# source /etc/timidity/freepats.cfg

# alternatively, you can use the fluid-soundfont:
source /etc/timidity/fluidr3_gm.cfg
source /etc/timidity/fluidr3_gs.cfg

Getting the midi anthem files

You will need to download the midi files for each countries, and place them in the media folder. They are not included in the repository because I'm not sure of the copyright.

For example, you could get them using the following command:

cd media
curl -JLO --referer http://www.download-midi.com http://www.download-midi.com/files/download/[8892-9026]

Included in the utils folder is a simple Ruby script that you can use to mass rename the files to their two letters name.

cd utils
gem install countries
ruby rename.rb

Running the bot

The config

The bot has 3 required params to start correctly:

ALLOWED_USERS='userid1 userid2'
ALLOWED_BOTS='botid1'
TOKEN='slack_token'

The parameters are pretty much self explanatory. ALLOWED_USERS and ALLOWED_BOTS are space separated user or bot ids allowed to interact with AnthemBOT. TOKEN is the Slack toke you created in the first step. There is an optional DEBUG='true' param that can be used to enable verbose logging. Params should be fed to the bot via the environment.

Starting the bot

How you run the bot is up to you. I strongly recommend running with a process manager to handle environment injection, restarts, monitoring and logging. There is an example PM2 config file included (ecosystem.config.js.example).

To use PM2 config file:

cp ecosystem.config.js.example ecosystem.config.js

Edit the file to add your config and then start the bot with:

pm2 start ecosystem.config.js

If all is well, should see the bot come online in your Slack

This is what it looks like:

• First answer is when it can't find a file matching the country
• Second answer is playing the requested anthem
• Third answer is when a user or bot that is not allowed try to trigger it

Contributing

Pull request with improvements are very much welcome!

© Louis-Michel Couture 2017