Node HipChat RSS Bot

I use this, among other things, to push application exception notifications into my team's HipChat room.

It's designed to monitor multiple RSS feeds of your choosing, and when a new item is found, push a link into a HipChat room.

It can run perpetually, for free, on Heroku!

Everything is configurable. Each feed can have a unique:

• polling frequency
• hipchat room (currently limited to one per feed)
• notification color
• poster-name
• notification flag

Setup

Running on Heroku

• This bot can run for free on a single Heroku 'worker' dyno.
• Requires a Redis instance to run. Not to worry, there are free tiers to some of the Heroku redis providers. Currently I recommend Redis To Go. No Redis configuration is necessary. If you choose a provider other than Redis To Go then you'll need to edit the code where the Redis client connects to your Redis instance.

gem install heroku
gem install foreman
git clone https://github.com/atuttle/node-hipchat-rss-bot.git hipchat-bot; cd hipchat-bot
npm install
heroku create --addons redistogo:nano

Then make the changes detailed in the HipChat and Feeds sections below.

To run it locally you need to have redis installed and running (the default configuration should be fine) and of course Node 0.8.x+. Then start the bot with:

foreman start

Hit Ctrl+C to stop the bot. Change and repeat as necessary.

Once you're satisfied, publish to Heroku:

git push heroku master;heroku logs -t

Watch the logs as your app starts up. Errors will be reported here. If everything is fine, you can hit Ctrl+C to close the log viewer and the bot will continue running.

For more information on controlling your Heroku app from the command line, see here.

HipChat

This bot uses the REST API to interact with your hipchat rooms, and as such does not require its own (paid) user account, like XMPP/Jabber bots.

You'll need an auth token, which you can obtain here: https://www.hipchat.com/admin/api

Edit main.js and put your auth token in the variable value:

var hipchatAuthToken = '';

Feeds

Just below the HipChat config you'll find a section where you can define your feeds. A couple are included as a syntax example. Feel free to remove and replace them with the feeds in which you're interested.

• url: duh!
• frequencyInMinutes: number of minutes (or a fraction, if you want sub-minute polling*)
• hipchat:
  • roomId: Integer room id in which you want new feed posts linked. Get a list of your rooms here: http://api.hipchat.com/v1/rooms/list?format=json&auth_token={YOUR-AUTH-TOKEN}
  • postColor: one of yellow, red, green, purple, gray, random
  • postByName: Any string, shows up as the poster name. 1-15 characters.
  • notify: Whether or not this message should trigger a notification for people in the room (change the tab color, play a sound, etc). Each recipient's notification preferences are taken into account by HipChat.

* Please don't use sub-minute polling unless you own the RSS feed/server being polled. Hitting someone else's server that rapidly is kind of a jerk move!