poglink 0.5.0

A bot that integrates the ARK Web API with Discord.

Initially developed for use in the official ARK: Survival Evolved Discord

Requirements

• Python 3.7+
• pip

Prerequisites

1. Create a bot on the Discord Developer Portal
2. Turn on Message Content Intent in the bot's settings page on the developer portal
3. Create Bot URL via URL Generator in the Discord Developer Portal. Make sure the bot has Send Messages, Read Messages/View Channels, Read Message History and Embed Links permissions.
4. Invite the bot to the server

Installation and Usage

There are a few different ways to run this bot on your own machine. Either in your own Python environment or in a docker container.

Installing in Python

• Before installing, copy sample_config.yaml, rename it to config.yaml, and fill in the required values.

• You'll also need to decide where you want to store this configuration file. By default, the bot will look for it in ~/.poglink, but you can change the location via the -d CLI argument.

• Whether you decide to use the default location, or a custom one, you'll need to move the config.yaml file to that directory before running.

• For example, if you chose to use the default, you'd need to move the config.yaml file to ~/.poglink/config.yaml

Installing from PyPi

Run the following command to install from PyPi

pip install poglink

Installing from Git repo

1. Get the code via either of the following two methods:

   a) Download & extract the latest bot release

   b) Clone the repo via git clone https://github.com/FM-17/poglink.git

2. Install the bot

   I'd suggest doing this within a virtual environment via pyenv or virtualenv, but its not required.

   cd {download location}/poglink/
   pip install .
   

Running in Python

To run the bot in Python you can either:

1. Execute via the CLI entrypoint: poglink, passing config parameters any of the ways described below; or
2. Import within your own Python code and execute poglink.main.run, passing in configuration parameters as keyword arguments.

Installing in Docker

Run the following command to pull the latest docker image

docker pull fm17/poglink

Running in Docker / Docker Compose

To run in a container, you can simply execute docker run fm17/poglink, passing in any relevant configuration parameters as environment variables. In order to pass in a configuration file or to maintain persistent data between containers, mount a volume to the /data dir inside the container (or whichever data directory is configured via the --data-dir CLI argument or the BOT_DATA_DIR environment variable).

In the example below, the host's ~/.poglink directory has been mounted to the container's /data directory. Therefore the config.yaml file must be moved to the ~/.poglink directory in order to be passed into the container. Both of these mounting directories can be modified as needed, see Configuration for more details.

Example docker-compose.yaml

version: "3"
services:
  bot:
    image: fm17/poglink:latest
    container_name: poglink
    volumes:
      - ~/.poglink:/data
    command: "" # provide CLI args here
    networks:
      - bot-net

networks:
  bot-net:

Configuration

This bot can pull configuration from one of multiple locations. Each parameter will be parsed independently in the following order of precedence:

1. CLI arguments
   • See help menu by running poglink -h for more information.
2. Configuration File
   • Assumed to be named config.yaml within the data directory.
   • Data directory is set to ~/.poglink unless otherwise specified.
3. Environment variables
   • Each parameter can be set via an environment variable prefixed with BOT_.
   • E.g. to configure the bot's polling delay, set BOT_POLLING_DELAY.
4. Defaults (optional)
   • Some configuration parameters have default values assigned, which will be used in the absence of any other user-provided configuration values.

Parameter Summary

The following configuration parameters are available to be set in any of the above described methods:

CLI Argument	Env Var	Default	Required	Description
--allowed-roles	BOT_ALLOWED_ROLES	None	No	Roles permitted to use bot commands (comma-separated list)
--polling-delay	BOT_POLLING_DELAY	60	No	Delay between each API check
--rates-urls	BOT_RATES_URLS	http://arkdedicated.com/dynamicconfig.ini	No	API endpoint to check for server rates (comma-separated list)
--bans-url	BOT_BANS_URL	http://arkdedicated.com/bansummary.txt	No	API endpoint to check for a ban summary
--rates-channel-id	BOT_RATES_CHANNEL_ID	None	Yes	Channel ID to post rates in
--bans-channel-id	BOT_BANS_CHANNEL_ID	None	Yes	Channel ID to post ban summary in
--token	BOT_TOKEN	None	Yes	Bot token (from Discord Developer Portal)
--data-dir	BOT_DATA_DIR	~/.poglink	No	Directory that will contain bot data, such as the config.yaml file
--debug	BOT_DEBUG	False	No	Enables debug logging

Future updates

• Configurable delay between change detection and posting to discord
• Option to disable auto-publishing in announcement channels
• Optional in-game server notification integration
• Custom API endpoint selection for rates
• Optional ban summary integration
• Bot setup workflow in Discord
• Platform selection