rhnvrm / constassemblybot

A twitter bot that tweets a sentence from the Indian Constituent Assembly Debates every 10 minutes.

@ConstAssembly Twitter Bot

A twitter bot that tweets a sentence from the Indian Constituent Assembly Debates every 10 minutes.

Development Docs

The bot resides in bot.py and uses the Tweepy library to tweet text. The bot depends on the following files:

1. data.txt - This file contains the raw text, which is used by the bot.
2. last_line.txt - This file is the memory of the bot. This is used so that the bot can dump its state to disk between each run. The bot currently runs as a cron job. Eg.

12
0

Where line 0 represents the row and line 1 represents the column in the data.txt file.

3. .env - This file contains the secrets required by the bot, such as Twitter API keys.

Getting Started

You can get started by cloning this repository.

git clone [email protected]/rhnvrm/ConstAssemblyBot

After this, you can install dependencies using:

cd ConstAssemblyBot
pipenv shell
pipenv install

You can now, install a cronjob like this:

*/10 * * * * cd $HOME/apps/ConstAssemblyBot && /usr/local/bin/pipenv run python bot.py

constassemblybot's Issues

Handle sentences with multiple dots at the end

The bot fails at the following example:

Dr. P. S. Deshmukh
I see the objection to my amendment, and do not press it. But, I think it would sound far better if the first word "an
other" is changed into "a" and the word "third" altered into "another". I am afraid that it might look as if I am sugg
esting too many changes. But we are making a constitution, and I do not want that anything should go out of this House
....

Add data

The bot has run out of data to tweet. If any one wants to volunteer and contribute to adding data feel free to ping either me or @kumbhakaran on this thread and we can help you get started and things to take care of while adding data.

Bot split tweet mid-word

Bot split the word here:

I know that. That is exactly the point for which I have praised Dr. Rajendra Prasad and hope he will extend to us the same consideration for placing our point of view as you would to any others, because it has always been our experience that when it com

es to a question of our placing our views we are invariably asked to be brief.

Char count of first sentence: 253

Bot broke at line 2514

Middle tweet is out of place :

Line for reference:

I would like just to say a few words with regard to another aspect of the question. The Resolution is there, but, how are we going to implement it? What are the impediments that we already see before us which may prevent us from carrying this Resolution into effect? Now, one, of course, is the status of the Constituent Assembly in the absence of the Muslim League. Dr. Jayakar yesterday referred to some analogy of a dinner party. He said, "If guests are invited and some guests do not come, then how can you have the dinner party?" But he forgot to say what will be the fate of the guests who have already arrived?

Looks like bot rolled back to an earlier point in the same line, it continues from there. Possibly an error writing to last_line.txt ?

Add Github Actions or Travis to automatically run unit tests

Handle `”` quotes

The unicode quote ” should be replaced by "
The Muslim League can come in later after we pass this Resolution”

Bot failed at line 2157

The bot broke at line 2157 after tweeting

"Until yesterday, Dr. Jayakar, I was entirely in favour of your Resolut
ion but Mr. Jinnah's Press Conference in London as made the whole difference
". I said, "What difference has it made?"

Bot stuck at 7562:149

When tweeting sentences greater than the limit, split() instead of slice

This enhancement can improve tweets like this one:
https://twitter.com/ConstAssembly/status/1265543272166043649

[Enhancement] Ability to test bot offline

Bot currently cannot be tested without using twitter API.
This can be done by mocking the api.

Better handling of duplicate tweets

Tweets like:

Hear, hear ...
Applause ...

Which are repeated often are currently handled by adding a . at the end and trying again. We need to come up with a better way to handle these.

Bot broke at Line 184 in data.txt

The bot broke at this line:

"Where there is no vision the people perish." (Applause).

last_line.txt had:

184
5

Add `No.` as a prefix in sentence parser

Bot is not able to handle the following case:

This can be fixed by editing:
https://github.com/rhnvrm/ConstAssemblyBot/blob/master/bot.py#L33

Sample Last Line Text File

Please add a sample last_line.txt file or add some more description in the Readme file regarding the nature of the data in this file. It is not very clear from the description provided so far.

Add alerts

Now that the bot has been running for a while without too many manual interventions, I think we can add alerts for the following:

• If tweets are getting duplicated and twitter is not allowing to tweet. This usually happens when some bug like #16 happens.
• If the last_line is about to be reached. at about say 5% is left.

The alerts, I think, can be configured using environment variables and sending can be done via email.