GradCafe Discord Bot

A Discord bot that monitors the GradCafe economics section and posts new updates to a Discord channel.

Features

• Scrapes GradCafe for new economics postings
• Stores messages in SQLite database
• Posts new messages to Discord channel
• Runs continuously with configurable check interval
• No external dependencies (R scripts or cron jobs)

Setup

1. Install Dependencies

pip install -r requirements.txt

2. Configure Environment Variables

Copy the example environment file:

cp .env.example .env

Edit .env and fill in your credentials:

• DISCORD_TOKEN: Your Discord bot token
• DISCORD_CHANNEL_ID: The Discord channel ID where messages will be posted
• CHECK_INTERVAL_SECONDS: How often to check for new messages (default: 60)
• DB_PATH: Path to SQLite database file (default: gradcafe_messages.db)

3. Seed the Database

Run the seed script to populate the database with current GradCafe postings:

python seed_database.py

This will scrape GradCafe once, store all current postings, and mark them as already posted to avoid sending duplicates to Discord.

4. Run the Bot

python bot.py

The bot will:

1. Initialize the database
2. Check GradCafe every CHECK_INTERVAL_SECONDS seconds
3. Store new messages in the database
4. Post unposted messages to Discord

Deployment

For deployment on cloud servers (DigitalOcean, Google Cloud, etc.):

1. Set environment variables in your server's configuration
2. Use a process manager like systemd or supervisor to keep the bot running
3. Ensure the bot restarts automatically if it crashes

Example systemd service file:

[Unit]
Description=GradCafe Discord Bot
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=youruser
WorkingDirectory=/path/to/grab-cafe
Environment="DISCORD_TOKEN=your_token"
Environment="DISCORD_CHANNEL_ID=your_channel_id"
ExecStart=/usr/bin/python3 bot.py
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

File Structure

• bot.py: Main Discord bot with background task
• scraper.py: Web scraping logic for GradCafe
• database.py: SQLite database operations
• seed_database.py: One-time seed script to populate database
• requirements.txt: Python dependencies
• .env.example: Template for environment variables

Old Files (Can be removed)

• grab-cafe-bot.py: Old bot implementation
• parse-grad-cafe.R: Old R scraping script
• messages.csv: Old message storage
• new_messages.csv: Old temporary message file