RimAlertBot

RimAlertBot is a cloud-hosted Telegram bot built with Python and deployed on AWS EC2 (Ubuntu).
It provides NBA scores, live game updates, team-specific schedules, and upcoming match information using the balldontlie API.

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Features

• /start – Displays bot information and available commands
• /score – Shows completed NBA games today
• /score YYYY-MM-DD – Shows completed games for a specific date
• /live – Displays currently live NBA games
• /team <team_name> – Shows next scheduled game for a specific team
• /schedule – Shows NBA schedule for the next 7 days
• Input validation and error handling
• Optimized API usage to reduce unnecessary requests

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Architecture

• Telegram User -> RimAlerBot (Python - async) -> balldontlie API -> Telegram Response.

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Cloud Deployment

• Hosted on AWS EC2 (Ubuntu 24.04)
• SSH key-based authentication
• Python virtual environment isolation
• Environment variables managed via .env
• Manual lifecycle management (start/stop/terminate EC2)
• Integrated third-party REST API (balldontlie)

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Screenshots

Bot Running on AWS EC2

EC2 Instance Status

Telegram Bot Features

/start Command

/live Command

/score Command

/score Input Validation

/team Command

/schedule Command

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Technical Challenges Solved

• Refactored multi-request team lookup into a single optimized API call
• Implemented ISO date validation
• Handled async command architecture using python-telegram-bot
• Managed EC2 lifecycle and server persistence
• Secured API keys using environment variables
• Prevented unnecessary API calls through input validation logic

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Installation (Local)

git clone https://github.com/RDC4321/RimAlertBot.git

cd RimAlertBot

python -m venv venv

pip install -r requirements.txt

Create a .env file in the project root:
BOT_TOKEN=your_telegram_bot_token
BALLDONTLIE_API_KEY=your_api_key

Run the bot:
python bot.py

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Future Improvements

• Convert to systemd service for automatic restart on crash
• Dockerize deployment
• Add logging and monitoring vis AWS CloudWatch
• Implement webhook-based architecture
• Add user favorites and persistent storage