The playbook can install and configure Buscarron for you.
Buscarron is bot that receives HTTP POST submissions of web forms and forwards them to a Matrix room.
To enable Buscarron, add the following configuration to your inventory/host_vars/matrix.example.com/vars.yml
file:
matrix_bot_buscarron_enabled: true
# Uncomment and adjust this part if you'd like to use a username different than the default
# matrix_bot_buscarron_login: bot.buscarron
# Generate a strong password here. Consider generating it with `pwgen -s 64 1`
matrix_bot_buscarron_password: PASSWORD_FOR_THE_BOT
# Adjust accepted forms
matrix_bot_buscarron_forms:
- name: contact # (mandatory) Your form name, will be used as endpoint, eg: buscarron.example.com/contact
room: "!qporfwt:{{ matrix_domain }}" # (mandatory) Room ID where form submission will be posted
redirect: https://example.com # (mandatory) To what page user will be redirected after the form submission
ratelimit: 1r/m # (optional) rate limit of the form, format: <max requests>r/<interval:s,m>, eg: 1r/s or 54r/m
hasemail: 1 # (optional) form has "email" field that should be validated
extensions: [] # (optional) list of form extensions (not used yet)
matrix_bot_buscarron_spamlist: [] # (optional) list of emails/domains/hosts (with wildcards support) that should be rejected automatically
By default, this playbook installs Buscarron on the buscarron.
subdomain (buscarron.example.com
) and requires you to adjust your DNS records.
By tweaking the matrix_bot_buscarron_hostname
and matrix_bot_buscarron_path_prefix
variables, you can easily make the service available at a different hostname and/or path than the default one.
Example additional configuration for your inventory/host_vars/matrix.example.com/vars.yml
file:
# Switch to the domain used for Matrix services (`matrix.example.com`),
# so we won't need to add additional DNS records for Buscarron.
matrix_bot_buscarron_hostname: "{{ matrix_server_fqn_matrix }}"
# Expose under the /buscarron subpath
matrix_bot_buscarron_path_prefix: /buscarron
Once you've decided on the domain and path, you may need to adjust your DNS records to point the Buscarron domain to the Matrix server.
By default, you will need to create a CNAME record for buscarron
. See Configuring DNS for details about DNS changes.
If you've decided to reuse the matrix.
domain, you won't need to do any extra DNS configuration.
After configuring the playbook and potentially adjusting your DNS records, run the installation command:
ansible-playbook -i inventory/hosts setup.yml --tags=setup-all,ensure-matrix-users-created,start
Notes:
-
the
ensure-matrix-users-created
playbook tag makes the playbook automatically create the bot's user account -
if you change the bot password (
matrix_bot_buscarron_password
in yourvars.yml
file) subsequently, the bot user's credentials on the homeserver won't be updated automatically. If you'd like to change the bot user's password, use a tool like synapse-admin to change it, and then updatematrix_bot_buscarron_password
to let the bot know its new password
To use the bot, invite the @bot.buscarron:example.com
to the room you specified in a config, after that any point your form to the form url, example for the contact
form:
<form method="POST" action="https://buscarron.example.com/contact">
<!--your fields-->
</form>
Note: to fight against spam, Buscarron is very aggressive when it comes to banning and will ban you if:
- if you hit the homepage (HTTP
GET
request to/
) - if you submit a form to the wrong URL (
POST
request to/non-existing-form
) - if
hasemail
is enabled for the form (like in the example above) and you don't submit anemail
field
If you get banned, you'd need to restart the process by running the playbook with --tags=start
or running systemctl restart matrix-bot-buscarron
on the server.
You can also refer to the upstream documentation.