Otto the discord-botto

A Swiss Army knife kind of Discord bot, kind of.

The project implements a Python Discord bot that is hosted on AWS Lambda within a Docker Container. The infrastructure is managed using AWS Cloud Development Kit (CDK).

  +----------------+        +----------------+       +--------------------+    +---------------------+
  |    Discord     |  HTTP  |                |       |                    |    |                     |
  |  (User Input)  +------->+  API Gateway   +------>+     AWS Lambda     +--->+   CloudWatch Logs   |
  +----------------+        |                |       |                    |    |                     |
                            +----------------+       |  +--------------+  |    +---------------------+
                                                     |  | Docker Image |  |
                                                     |  +--------------+  |
                                                     |                    |
                                                     +---------+----------+
                                                               |
                                                               v
                                                        +-------------+
                                                        |   AWS CDK   |
                                                        +-------------+

What does the bot do?

• Generate inspirational and philosophical quotes
• Get current weather forecast by location and ISO 3166 country code
• Generate Discord timestamps
• Greet users in various languages

Pre-requisites

There are a few things that are required and set up before the bot can be used:

• Have Python 3.11 or higher installed
• Install requirements.txt
  • pip install -r requirements.txt
• Discord server to invite the Discord bot
• Discord API token
  • Obtained via Discord Developer Portal by creating Discord app (bot)
• Create a .env file in the root project directory and store e.g. your Discord app token like so TOKEN=[your discord app token]
• Invite the bot to your Discord server
• Configure AWS Credentials
• Ensure AWS CLI is set up

Environment Variables

Required secrets in .env and AWS Lambda:

• TOKEN - Discord bot token
• APPLICATION_ID - Discord application id
• PUBLIC_KEY - Discord public key
• WEATHER_API_KEY - OpenWeather API key

Registering Commands

The bot must have application commands (slash commands) registered with Discord.

Run register_commands from the src directory

cd src
python -m commands.register_commands

Deploy to AWS Lambda

Bootstrap the CDK

• cdk bootstrap

Then, deploy

• cdk deploy

Data

The data used for this project were publicly sourced and were cleaned/transformed for this project.

Country Codes

• iso_alpha refers to the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code (249 officially assigned)
• iso_currency_country_name refers to the country name used in ISO 4217 currency codes
• common_name refers to the name a country is commonly referred to

Countries were renamed to their commonly known names to allow for better usability

Some examples of renaming

• Bolivia (Plurinational State of) -> Bolivia
• Cocos (Keeling) Islands -> Cocos Islands
• Congo -> Congo-Brazzaville
• Democratic Republic of the Congo -> Congo-Kinshasa
• Lao People's Democratic Republic -> Laos
• Republic of Korea -> South Korea
• Svalbard and Jan Mayen Islands -> Svalbard and Jan Mayen
• Syrian Arab Republic -> Syria
• United States of America -> United States
• Viet Nam -> Vietnam

Special cases for common_name (Spelling)

• Åland Islands
• Côte d'Ivoire
• Curaçao

Time Zones

• zone_name refers to the TZ identifier from the tz database

Unlisted tzdata

• BV - Bouvet Island
• HM - Heard Island and McDonald Islands
• EH - Western Sahara

Security

Discord Interaction Requests

User interactions with the bot requires validation using

• X-Signature-Ed25519 as a signature
• X-Signature-Timestamp as a timestamp

Acknowledgements

API

• zenquotes.io
• stoic-quotes.com
• OpenWeather

Data

• Country Codes
• Time Zones