Random Quote (/rquote) Breakdown¶

/rquote is a command that takes quotes from a configured channel and presents it in fictional situations for comedic effect.

Theme creation¶

A theme refers to the fictional scenarios available for EnduraBot to select from. One might be a member of HR expressing concern during a 1-on-1, while another might be aliens freaking out over how weird humans are.

Prior to 2.0 themes were hard coded at cogs/rquote.py. Now, themes can be made by editing EnduraBot's configuration files.

The creation of a theme is a combination of setting the embed configuration at data/variables.json and setting the dialogue at data/misc_text.json.

Embed configuration¶

The following is one of the default themes that ships with EnduraBot, held under the rquote_themes JSON object:

"hr": {
    "title": ":briefcase: HR Office of EDC, Inc.",
    "color": 10181046,
    "opener_key": "ooc_hr"
}

hr is an arbitrary name for the theme. This can be set to anything without consequence.

title is the raw title that the embed should use when the theme is chosen. It will always use this specific title.

color is the integer form of the color the embed should use. This can be easily Googled for any given color. This is not the same as the RGB or HEX form of a color.

opener_key is a special name that can also be anything. It is used at misc_text.json to match dialogue options to the theme. The convention I have done is to prepend ooc_ to the arbitrary name, but it is not required.

There are no limits to the number of themes that can be added. Themes are chosen randomly.

Dialogue¶

The dialogue used by /rquote is set at misc_text.json.

The following is the available dialogue that ships with EnduraBot's default hr theme.

    "ooc_hr": [
        "Thank you for coming in. I know this was sudden, but we've heard rumors that you said something... odd. Quote:",
        "So, regarding your contribution to the Q&A at the all-hands meeting, specifically when you took the mic and announced:"
    ]

When /rquote is run a theme is chosen at random amongst the themes set forth at variables.json. It then uses the opener_key found in the selected theme's data and matches it to the key of the same name in misc_text.json, in this case being ooc_hr. The opener_key for each theme should have an entry in misc_text.json that consists of a list of string values representing dialogue.

As previously explained, this matches dialogue options to a given theme, avoiding dialogue mismatching.

The green box above is the title set at variables.json. The red box is a selected dialogue option as demonstrated in the above code-block.

There are no limits to the amount of dialogue that can exist per theme. Dialogue, like themes, are chosen randomly.

Logic breakdown¶

Below is an abbreviated breakdown of how /rquote works programmatically.

At the top of the file we import the RquoteUsed class and set it to variable dupe_blocker.

from classes.db_rquote_used_handler import RquoteUsed

# ...

dupe_blocker = RquoteUsed()

Then we register the command.

# --- COMMAND: /rquote ---

@app_commands.command(name="rquote", description="Take an out of context quote and give it the wrong context.")
@app_commands.check(check_permissions)
@app_commands.guilds(GUILD_ID)
@app_commands.checks.dynamic_cooldown(custom_cooldown)

async def rquote(self, interaction: discord.Interaction):

@app_commands.checks.dynamic_cooldown(custom_cooldown) runs a custom function defined in rquote.py that determines if a member using the command should be cooled down or not.

Moving on: the bot checks to ensure a quote is not generated inside of the channel quotes are picked from. This is simply a preference chosen at time of development; this ocurring would not cause /rquote to break.

if interaction.channel.id == ooc_channel_id:
    await interaction.response.send_message("You may not generate quotes in the channel quotes come from.", ephemeral=True)
    logger.log(UNAUTHORIZED, f"{interaction.user.name} ({interaction.user.id}) attempted to generate a quote in #{interaction.channel.name}.")
    return

Now, the command begins to do date calculations. This is because running a function to pick a message at random (such as random.choice()) on an entire channel is ill-advised; especially if it has a lot of messages. For a couple hundred messages it might be okay, but once it hits 1,000 or more, putting all of them into memory would cause problems.

To get around this, rather than running random.choice() on the entire channel, a random date between now and a pre-defined date in the past will be selected. We'll then pick a quote sometime around this date. This allows EnduraBot to scour a functionally unlimited number of messages while remaining efficient.

#Current date - date roughly close to the first quote in #out-of-context
num_days = datetime.now(timezone.utc) - datetime(2022, 3, 14, 0, 0, 0, tzinfo=timezone.utc)

# This selects the random date.
random_date = datetime.now(timezone.utc) - timedelta(days=random.randint(1, num_days.days))

As msg_table populates it dynamically runs a regular expression filter; if the message does not meet the filter criteria, it is discarded. This regex is configurable via variable rquote_regex at data/variables.json. After that, we use the method check_status() from RquoteUsed to ensure the message hasn't been used recently. If so, the message is discarded.

msg_table = [
    msg async for msg in ooc_channel.history(limit=75, around=random_date)
    if not msg.author.bot
    and (
        (msg.content and (
            re.search(rf'''{SETTINGS_DATA["rquote_regex"]}''', msg.content)
        ))
    )
    and (
        dupe_blocker.check_status(f"{msg.id}") == False
    )
]

Once msg_table is populated with eligible messages EnduraBot will then make the random selection. This selection is then added to the recently used quotes table to ensure it isn't used again in the near future.

selected_msg = random.choice(msg_table)

dupe_blocker.add_msg(f"{selected_msg.id}")

all_matches = re.findall(rf'''{SETTINGS_DATA["rquote_regex"]}''', selected_msg.content)
extracted_quote = '"\n"'.join(match.strip() for match in all_matches)
formatted_quote = f'"{extracted_quote}"'

The bot then picks a random theme, gets the theme's appropriate dialogue options, and then picks one of the dialogue options at random.

# Select a random theme and appropriate opening text
selected_theme_data = self.themes[random.choice(list(self.themes.keys()))]
opener_key_from_json = selected_theme_data["opener_key"]
random_opener = random.choice(self.misc_data[opener_key_from_json])

The embed is then constructed. The footer is sourced from variable rquote_footer at data/variables.json.

embed = discord.Embed(
        title=selected_theme_data["title"],
        description=f"{random_opener}\n\n>>> {formatted_quote}",
        color=selected_theme_data["color"]
        )

embed.set_footer(text=SETTINGS_DATA["rquote_footer"])

If the selected message had an attachment, the bot will display the first attachment as the embed's image.

if selected_msg.attachments:
    has_attachment = True
    embed.set_image(url=selected_msg.attachments[0].url)

Then, the embed is sent, and the action is logged.

await interaction.response.send_message(embed=embed)
        logger.info(f"{interaction.user.name} ({interaction.user.id}) generated a random quote in #{interaction.channel.name} ({interaction.channel.id}).")
        logger.debug(f"{interaction.user.name} ({interaction.user.id}) generated a random quote. Channel: [#{interaction.channel.name} ({interaction.channel.id})]. Dated: [{selected_msg.created_at.strftime("%B %d, %Y")}]. Theme: [{selected_theme_data["title"]}]. Opener: [{random_opener}]. Content: [{formatted_quote}]. Attachment: [{has_attachment}].")