a prototype reporting interface for discord moderation-- originally a capstone project for ada developers academy, cohort 14

based on the results of this capstone project/prototype, project-whistlebot will be undergoing a major re-design and re-architecture starting around august 2021 at earliest. the intent is to make project-whistlebot more compatible with common discord server configurations, instead of competing with existing services and bots. now that this repo is no longer constrained to certain capstone project requirements, this repo will be re-written to better reflect the needs of the discord community.

1. removal of the quart app! out of security concerns and limiting the number of interfaces available to access whistlebot features and functionality, in the future, project-whistlebot will no longer have a quart app frontend. the quart app initially fulfilled a front end requirement for the ada capstone, but in my opinion, there are serious security issues with being able to run administrative functions on a 3rd party interface, especially if the intent of project-whistlebot is to automate reporting functions for servers with very large userbases. while project-whistlebot will no longer formally support or provide its own web app in the future, you are free to create your own at your own risk. also, permissions management will be a lot easier this way.
2. more object oriented design! "working code" was the key prerogative for the prototype, but it would be nice to be able to scale the app and significantly clean up/refactor the code.
3. adding tests! this should hopefully reduce manual testing.
4. utilizing the cache/discord channels to store logs instead of an external database! again, this is for security concerns, as well as making project-whistlebot data more accessible to its end users.

awesome! for now, please add your thoughts in the thread under this discussion board!

the following sections may contain out of date information as a result.

please stay tuned for more updates!

project whistlebot is an experiment to explore a possible reporting system/web interface (whistlebot) that moderators and admins can use to ensure the safety and comfort of members of their community. as such, while whistlebot will be designed a built with the best possible experience in mind, it will also be built with the intent of trying things that might not work as well in practice, trying new things and seeing how they work, and learning from all that to help improve the way we can moderate our communities.

• python
  • hikari
  • hikari-lightbulb
• quart (w/ built-in hypercorn)
  • quart-discord (TO BE REMOVED)
• mongodb
  • pymongo

whistlebot will be planned to anticipate the worst, but assume the best -- that means that while there will (hopefully) be safeguards from using whistlebot's data with malicious intent, at this point in time, project whistlebot cannot be held responsible for misuse of its critical features in moderating servers, but will have some features included to help prevent members who may try to abuse the system.

this project is currently set up to be run locally or on an Amazon EC2 machine (not recommended for security reasons).

at minimum, it is assumed that you have:

• the most recent version of python installed on your machine
• a mongoDB uri from mongoDB's cloud. here's a good guide.
• a discord bot. see the section How to Create a Discord Bot Account here.
  • go to OAuth2 here: https://discord.com/developers/applications/<YOUR_DISCORD_BOT>/oauth2
    • add /callback (for AWS EC2 Ubuntu 20.04) or http://0.0.0.0:8000/callback to your redirects.
  • go to /bot here: https://discord.com/developers/applications/<YOUR_DISCORD_BOT>/bot
    • turn on ALL options EXCEPT Requires OAuth2 Code Grant.
    • under Bot Permissions, turn on ALL permissions under General Permissions and Text Permissions EXCEPT: administrator, create instant invite, change nickname, manage emojis, send TTS messages, attach files, mention everyone, use external emojis
• a means to run a python virtual environment (if you don't wish to deploy on AWS) OR an AWS EC2 virtual machine (Ubuntu 20.04) with an Elastic IP.
  • if you are running this on AWS EC2 Ubuntu 20.04:
    • go to Security Groups to make sure that your Inbound rules are "anywhere" for the following ports: 80 (HTTP), 8080, 8000, 443 (HTTPS). you may set your SSH rule so that only your IP address can use port 22.
    • verify that you have an IAM user with all Admin privileges associated with your machine.
    • make sure you have an Elastic IP associated with your machine. scroll down to Adding Elastic IP addresses here.
    • i recommend Cyberduck for managing files, connections, and terminals on your EC2 machine.
    • gunner bones on youtube has an incredibly helpful setup tutorial here.
  • if you are running this on your machine:
    • make sure you have a virtual environment for python, like pyenv
    • otherwise (for the very lazy), you can install PyCharm for free.

1. open your terminal (or connect to your EC2 terminal if you are running this on EC2) and clone this repo.
2. run $ pip install -r requirements.txt to download dependencies.
3. create a .env file in the root folder /project-whistlebot/ -- to find what environmental variables you will need, open the settings.py file at /project-whistlebot/app , which in the comments will explain to you which variables are needed to set up your env file.

1. cd into project-whistlebot/app.
2. run the following commands:

• $ ./ubuntu_nrun.sh
• $ ./ubuntu_apprun.sh
• the terminal should output something about nohup per command, and you can press the enter key to bypass.

3. close terminal. your bot should be running and your site will be up at your EC2 machine public IPv4 DNS.
4. to kill your processes, type $ ps aux and look for the PID for python3 bot.py and /usr/bin/python3.... type $ kill <PID> for each process to terminate.

1. cd into project-whistlebot/app.
2. in the root folder, open two new terminals.
3. in one terminal, enter $ ./ubuntu_nrun.sh for the bot.
4. in another terminal, enter $ ./ubuntu_apprun.sh for the site, which should be up at http://0.0.0.0:8000/.
5. you may close these terminals if you no longer wish to run them.

1. open project in pycharm. run bot.py and app.py. make sure they are both configured to the project-whistlebot root folder to collect env variables.

AS OF FEB 17, 2021 -- whistlebot was a capstone project for the classroom portion of cohort 14 of ada developers academy.

please be noted that although a front end was created for purposes of the capstone, it is highly likely that project-whistlebot will no longer have a dashboard/interface in future versions in order to better streamline with how discord moderators typically run servers. there are currently plans to convert from using a database to caching and saving info in a custom channel, as well as turning whistlebot into a bot extension. also, considerable refactoring needs to be done on the code base.

starting feb 19, 2021, i will be open to reviewing pull requests and suggested modifications for the bot, but cannot guarantee the speediest response until possibly summer 2021! thank you for understanding!

you can view the trello board HERE.

for very rough wireframes, please see the wireframes folder!