This project implements a module to fetch & publish space images to telegram channel using Telegram Bot API. The theme of the images is all about space and the universe. The images are fetched from different sources:

• r/SpaceX API
• NASA API

This module fetches images with meta information such as date and description, downloads them and directly posts it to your channel.
The image publication appears with user defined interval - by default once in 24 hours.
The images showed (downloaded) once, won't be published again.

1. Clone / download the repository
2. Read installation and configuration steps below
3. Read user manual

1. Install Python3 and project dependencies
   Python3 should be already installed.

   The project uses Pipenv tool, that automatically creates a virtual environment and installs all project dependencies.
   Please refer to Pipenv documentation to install it.

   When Pipenv is installed, use the following command to create virtual environment and install dependencies:

   pipenv install --dev
   

   To activate this project's virtualenv, run:

   pipenv shell
   

2. Create Telegram Bot & generate authentication token. Telegram Bot is needed to publish messages (e.g. images, posts etc.) to your channel.

   Please read the official documentation in order to create a bot using BotFather.

   Once you've created a bot and received your authentication token, add the bot to your channel and make it an administrator. Afterwards the channel id should be placed in configuration file .config:

   ...
   TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID='@your_channel_id'
   ...
   

   Finally, place the generated authentication token in a file named .secrets. The file should be located in root directory of the project. The authentication token should look like:

   TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN=2109472554:DDE8MfhNK8J_x75Fx-A_RZ7b3mYK3PhOO10
   

3. Generate NASA API key This module works with NASA API, which requires an API key.
   To generate an API key follow the instructions in the official NASA documentation page.

   Finally, place the key in the .secrets file like:

   NASA_API_KEY=AeFGjzewVGGySj5MLksqOcJf8HwrcXmkeslbNshh
   

1. To run the module use the following command within created virtual environment:

   python3 main.py  
   

2. Possible user configurations:
   Use the configuration file .config to configure more precise settings.

   The file is used to configure settings such as the location to save images, the publishing interval time, and the channel ID:

   IMAGES_DIR_PATH=data/images
   TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID='@your_channel_id'
   IMAGE_PUBLISHING_INTERVAL_SECONDS=86400
   

   You are free to change it!

The code is written for educational purposes on online-course for web-developers dvmn.org.