Help:Bots

This page is for outlining basic step towards running a 'bot on Wiktionary. This is a companion page to WT:BOTS.

Preliminaries
There are several things you need to do to become a 'bot operator.


 * 1) Download and install python.
 * 2) Download and install Pywikibot.
 * 3) Create an account that has "Bot" as the last three characters of the username.  (Usually capital "B" — not strictly enforced.)
 * 4) Get community approval for what you want to do.
 * 5) Run some tests.
 * 6) Garner as much feedback as you can.
 * 7) Run some more tests.
 * 8) Start a WT:VOTE for approval.  (Only done for recurring tasks, not one-time things.)

Downloading and installing Python is quite straight-forward, and well documented depending on the flavor you pick (e.g. Linux, Windows, Mac, Solaris, VMS, etc.) Estimated time: 25 minutes.

Downloading the 'pywikipediabot' framework is the "normal" type of download from http://sf.net/. When you "tar -zxvf" or "unzip" the file, you get a directory full of different programs. Since Python is an interpreted language, you can simply view all the programs before running them. Most of the "framework" programs are pretty self-explanatory, particularly looking at the input parameters parsing sections. Setting up the "user-config.py" file (all four lines) tends to give people lots of trouble - please remember to read the FAQ first. Make sure there is no indentation and that the last line is blank. Estimated time: 35 minutes (reading instructions)

To test that all is working, do  to see that it runs OK. Note that your cookies will usually persist for quite a while.

Now that you are a new bot operator, check out WT:BOT/T to see if there are any pending requests for you to fulfil.