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RUBot

·366 words·2 mins
NestJS Web Scraping TypeScript Node.js
Table of Contents

Summary
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RUBot is a Telegram bot built with NestJS that delivers the daily and weekly menu of UFPA’s university restaurant.
It scrapes the official RU website, formats the menu, and sends it through a user-friendly Telegram interface.
The project also exposes a private RESTful API for retrieving menus in JSON format.

Try it here

GitHub repository:

carloscardoso05/rubjs

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Problem & Motivation
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At UFPA, the official university restaurant (RU) publishes its menu only on a static web page, which is not mobile-friendly and can be cumbersome for students to access daily.
RUBot was created to provide an easier way for students to check the menu through Telegram, a tool most already use daily.

Features
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Chat with the RUBot displaying the daily menu
RUBot answering the /hoje command showing the daily menu
Chat with the RUBot displaying the weekly menu
RUBot answering the /semana command showing the weekly menu

Telegram Bot
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  • Built with Telegraf and nestjs-telegraf.
  • Commands:
    • /hoje → Returns today’s menu.
    • /semana → Returns the full week’s menu.

Web Scraping
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  • Uses Cheerio to extract menus directly from UFPA’s RU website.
  • Formats meals with emojis for clarity (main dish, vegetarian option, side dishes).

REST API
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  • Provides programmatic access to menus in JSON format:
    • /hoje → Today’s menu.
    • /semana → Weekly menu.

Security & Reliability
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  • Implements rate limiting with telegraf-ratelimit.
  • Includes error handling for scraping failures.

Tech Stack
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Project Structure
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The bot follows a modular architecture within a NestJS application:

  • src/scraper/ → Extracts menus from the RU website.
  • src/formatter/ → Formats scraped data for Telegram.
  • src/bot/ → Handles commands and Telegram integration.
  • src/app.controller.ts → REST API endpoints for menus.

User: /semana
Bot: Lists the menu for each weekday with emojis.

Installation & Running
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Prerequisites
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  • Node.js 18+ and npm.
  • Telegram bot token (via BotFather).

Setup
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  1. Create a .env file in the root:
TELEGRAM_KEY=<your_bot_token>
  1. Install dependencies:
npm install
  1. Run in development:
npm run start:dev
  1. Run in production:
npm run start:prod

Testing
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npm run test

Contributing
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Contributions, issues, and feature requests are welcome. Please fork the repository and open a pull request.

License
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This project is licensed under the MIT License.