FCOM server

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Note: if you're just looking to use FCOM, please see the repository for FcomClient.

Also, I would prefer that you don't run an instance of my bot. Just use the one I have!

Overview

Although the bot appears to users as a single, cohesive entity, it actually consists of three separate components:

• A client-facing Flask API
  • Accepts forwarded messages
  • Allows clients to "confirm" a registration token and provide a callsign
    • The API responds with the Discord username (and Snowflake ID) associated with the given token
  • Allows users to deregister (i.e. stop forwarding messages) through the client application
• A Discord bot
  • Sends the forwarded messages to the associated Discord user
• A relational database (specifically, MariaDB)
  • This acts as the link between the two
  • It also stores the mappings between Discord users and FCOM clients

The bot and the API need to be run simultaneously.

Requirements

Python 3.10+ is required. For required packages, please refer to the included requirements.txt.

Server setup

Database

Initial setup

CREATE DATABASE fcom;
CREATE USER '<username>'@'localhost' identified by '<password>';

Create the following environment variables for the login:

• Username: FCOM_DB_USERNAME
• Password: FCOM_DB_PASSWORD

Tables

See included schema.sql file.

Additional files

All additional files are to be created in the project root (i.e. /FcomServer)

Discord credentials

Create a file named discord_credentials.py:

TOKEN = 'token goes here'
FCOM_DISCORD_SERVER_ID = 1234567

The token can be found at https://discordapp.com/developers/applications/

FCOM_DISCORD_SERVER_ID is the (snowflake) ID of the Discord server on which the Discord bot lives on. This can be obtained by right-clicking the server's icon in the sidebar of the Discord client, and clicking "Copy ID" (you'll need enable Developer Mode under App Settings > Appearance)

Current client version

Create a file named curr_client_version.txt. This file should contain the current version number in the following format:

FcomClient/x.y.z

x.y.z is the client version number (e.g. 0.8.0). This string should be updated whenever a new FcomClient is released, as users will be automatically notified of a client update upon callsign registration.

Bot and API

First, download from GitHub, then set up virtualenv:

cd FcomServer
python3.10 -m venv ./venv
source ./venv/bin/activate
pip3 install wheel
pip3 install -r requirements.txt

Create a file named bot_token.txt inside the FcomServer folder (i.e. at the top level). It should contain your bot token, and nothing else.

Then, run both the bot and the API. They must be run simultaneously.

python3 main_bot.py
python3 main_api.py

If you want to have both run in the background, you'll have to set them up as a service on your operating system.

As is the case with any Flask API, please use a production server to serve the FCOM API. My implementation uses gunicorn, but you can use anything, really. If not using the former, you'll have to remove gevent/greenlet/gunicorn from the requirements.txt file before installing dependencies via pip.

To get out of the virtual environment:

deactivate

User registration expiry

As of the time of writing, due to difficulties in getting the bot to clean up old registrations, this feature is implemented via a cronjob that runs every 5 minutes.

Implement the following SQL command via any tool of your choice, as long as it can be executed via cron:

DELETE FROM registration
WHERE  ( is_verified IS TRUE
         AND last_updated < Date_sub(Now(), INTERVAL 24 hour) )
        OR ( is_verified IS FALSE
             AND last_updated < Date_sub(Now(), INTERVAL 5 minute) );