A customizable Facebook Group embetterment robot.
Hackbot uses the Facebook Graph API to implement extra moderative features that are not currently available to group administrators. At the moment, it only supports the closing of comment threads, but it's designed to be highly extensible.
An instance of hackbot is running on Hackathon Hackers.
You'll need to set a few configuration options before using the hackbot in
config.json. Add your Facebook Group ID, the refresh rate in milliseconds,
and the IDs of the group's moderators to the configuration file.
To generate an access token, open up the Facebook Graph API
Explorer and make sure you're using a custom application. Click "Get
Access Token" and make sure the user_groups and publish_actions permissions
are ticked. Click the blue "Get Access Token" in the modal. Copy the
short-lived access token and navigate in your browser to the following URL:
https://graph.facebook.com/oauth/access_token?
client_id=APP_ID&
client_secret=APP_SECRET&
grant_type=fb_exchange_token&
fb_exchange_token=SHORT_LIVED_ACCESS_TOKEN
Replace APP_ID, APP_SECRET, and SHORT_LIVED_ACCESS_TOKEN with the proper
values. Take the long-lived (60 day) access token in the body and save it in an
environment variable named ACCESS_TOKEN. Then you should be good to go!
Keep in mind that Facebook's user IDs are unique to each application, so you'll have to find some way of finding out moderator IDs using the Graph API.
Note: This process is annoying. Please consider implementing this through a web-based flow.
To start the hackbot, use your long-lived access token and run:
$ env ACCESS_TOKEN=[LONG_LIVED_ACCESS_TOKEN] npm start
Currently, there is no way to update the access token without restarting the
hackbot. You can set the port for the HTTP server using the PORT environment
variable.
To generate the docs:
$ npm run doc
$ open doc/index.html
Logs are stored in log/ and are rotated daily. To view the logs:
$ npm run log
Filters are the fundamental units of extension for hackbot.
You can add thread filters under the lib/filters directory. An example
closed thread filter is provided.
Filters are functions that receive an array of posts, representing a post/comment thread on the Facebook Group. Items of the array are Post objects where the first item is the original post.
If you add a filter, make sure to add its exported function to the filters
array in the index file.
Made with caffeine at MHacks V by Alex Kern and Eva Zheng.
MIT. Contributions welcome!