Output the pocs.say messages to Twitter (and possibly more)

[jeremylan]

This feature was suggested by @jamessynge on the forums, see the discussion here:

https://forum.projectpanoptes.org/t/help-getting-started/71

Something that is not critical but will be really useful would be the ability to send a tweet for each of the “say” messages that the software posts; these are intended for human consumption, such as “Parking the mount” or “Observing HAT-9”.

I created a simple Python script that uses the PanMessaging class to subscribe to the PANCHAT channel.

I used the Tweepy library (http://www.tweepy.org/) to output the messages on a Twitter account I have for development.

It would be good now to get a little more requirements for me to keep working at this i.e.

• stuff to put on a config file (i.e. Twitter API keys, channels to listen to, etc.)
• timeouts and how to create this process, i.e. an executable, a simple script to run via Python...
• should I also consider outputting to a Slack account?

Any suggestion welcome
Thanks

[wtgee]

Awesome, thanks @jeremylan! Great that you are jumping in.

For another project that subclasses POCS I wanted to get the slack feature working. Turns out it was dead simple. I haven't yet put out a PR for that but you can see it here (you setup the url via slack, which controls which channel it is sent to).

It would definitely be a little cleaner if it were hidden away within some kind of PanMessaging class as I'm imagining you've done. You could go ahead and put that slack code listed above alongside whatever you have done as I won't be able to get to that branch for a few weeks. That would allow you to test how to implement it in two different ways, which is nice. We're always happy to have a PR coming in!

The above code just assumes there is a slack_webhook_url in the config but obviously that will start to expand as we add things like twitter, youtube (timelapse movie upload), etc. We should create a top-level config item (maybe social_accounts?) with sub-items such as api keys, url, etc.

Just a note, the config files are in $POCS/conf_files, with the main file being pocs.yaml. The loading of the config automatically supports a localized version, so anything in $POCS/conf_files/pocs_local.yaml will override the default config items.

Alternatively we could just have a separate config file (e.g. $POCS/conf_files/social.yaml - which also automatically supports social_local.yaml). This would then require a slight modification to how we construct a POCS instance by doing something like pocs = POCS(config=['social']) in the pocs_shell, but has the advantage of keeping the main config file clean of these somewhat optional features.

Slack issue: #28

[jeremylan]

Hi @wtgee thanks for the reply

That's great, I'll work at my solution to integrate with the config files as you suggest and add both Twitter and Slack.

I noticed in your code you added the code directly to the pocs.say method, while I implemented a PanMessaging subscriber on port 6511 for the 'PANCHAT' channel as @jamessynge suggested.

Which method would you prefer? If we go the subscriber route I could trigger it (something like SocialSubscriber class or similar) based on info in the config file.

This subscriber could reside either in pocs_shell or in core itself, I'm not too sure atm. Any suggestion on your preferred approach?

I'm also happy to do the separate config file if you think it's the cleanest approach.

I'll then send you the PR for review, I'm just learning the system (& Python) so please bear with me, I am also working at this on my spare time so it may take a little while :)

If you have time, could you also please have a quick look at the core dump error I get on my POCS installation? It only runs for a few minutes before quitting. Error details are on the forum thread.

Talk soon and thank you

[jeremylan]

Hi @wtgee

I created the PR.

Any feedback welcome as I'm new to the project & Python :)
I checked the tests and also gave some attention to test with partially completed configs entries.

The only think I could not understand is, every time there is a network call (either for Twitter or Slack) I get an error when the libraries invoke logger.debug. The error is outputted in the POCS shell but obviously is handled correctly and does not cause an exception.

However I could not figure out why this is happening, I tried several libraries and they all do it.
I think it must be something within my environment.

The error output is below. Any idea welcome :)
Thanks

debug_err.txt

[wtgee]

Awesome, thanks @jeremylan ! I'll take a look at the PR. The logging is probably related to #393, which has been hard to pin down. I was doing some work in the last few days where I was seeing this as well. Something related to loading logging from an outside module before loading POCS. The fileline it refers to is the custom log formatting we do.

I'll get to PR in a few hours. Cheers!

[jeremylan]

Ahhh yes @wtgee, definitely same issue as #393.

Glad it's not something I introduced ;P