drphil.rb - Voting Bot - gem update and bug fixes

New Features

Bug/console output fixes.
Improved unique_author logic to use account_history instead of internal timer for improved accuracy between runs.
Gem update.
Additional error handling.
Handling bad json_metadata.

Features

YAML config.
- voting_rules
  - winfrey mode that acts like the winfrey bot, all voters vote for everyone
  - drphil mode one random voter votes for everyone (default)
  - following_vote_weight - for accounts that the voter follows
  - followers_vote_weight - for accounts that follow the voter
  - min_rep (default 25.0)
  - min_wait and max_wait (in minutes) so that you can fine-tune voting delay.
  - favorite_accounts list and separate favorites_vote_weight option.
    - Note: votes will be cast for favorites irregardless of rep.
  - enable_comments option to vote for post replies (default false).
  - only_first_posts option to only vote on an author's first post (default false).
  - max_rep option, useful for limiting votes to newer authors (default 99.9).
  - vote_signals account list.
    - Optionally allows multiple bot instances to cooperate by avoiding vote swarms.
    - If enabled, this feature allows cooperation without sharing keys (in drphil mode).
  - min_rep can now accept either a static reputation or a dynamic property.
    - Existing static reputation still supported, e.g.: 25.0
    - Dynamic reputation, e.g.: dynamic:100. This will occasionally query the top 100 trending posts and use the minimum author reputation.
    - Now checking vote_weight: 0.00 % and skipping without broadcast.
      - This is useful for special configurations that only vote for favorites.
    - min_voting_power to create a floor with will allow the voter to recharge over time without having to stop the script.
  - Optionally configure voters as a separate filename. E.g:
    - voters: voters.txt
      - The format for the file is just: account wif (no leading dash, separated by space)
    - Or continue to use the previous format.
  - Also optional support for separate files in each (format one per line or separated by space or both):
    - favorite_accounts
    - skip_accounts
    - skip_tags
    - flag_signals
    - vote_signals
  - only_fully_powered_up which will only vote for posts that receive 100% STEEM Power author rewards.
Skip posts with declined payout.
Skip posts that already have votes from external scripts and posts that were edited.
Argument called replay: allows a replay of n blocks allowing you to catch up to the present.
- E.g.: ruby drphil.rb replay:90 will replay the last 90 blocks (about 4.5 minutes).
Thread management
- Counter displayed so you know what kind of impact ^C will have.
- This also keeps the number of threads down when authors edit before Dr. Phil votes.
Now streaming on Last Irreversible Block Number, just to be fancy.
Now checking for new HF18 cashout_time value (if present).
- This will skip voting when authors edit their old archived posts.
- Added unique_author (optional) which takes an integer in minutes. This will limit voting to 1 vote per period. E.g.: Set it to 1440 to only vote for each author once a day.
- Added max_votes_per_post (optional) which only votes n times per post (winfrey mode only).
- Added only_tags (optional) which only votes on posts that include these tags.
- Alternative voting weights all inherit from vote_weight if not present.
- Favorites (favorite_accounts) can now have individual vote percent.
  - Formatted as: account:weight (e.g.: inertia:100.00)
- Now checking if any voter can vote at all. If at least one voter has a non-zero vote_weight, return true. Otherwise, don't bother to even queue up a new thread, thus saving memory.
- Argument called stream:false will exit without streaming the blockchain. Useful in situations where you only want to replay: and exit.

Overview

Dr. Phil (drphil.rb) is reimplementation of the "Winfrey" voting bot specification. The goal is to give everyone an upvote.

One optional improvement is that instead of voting 1% by 100 accounts like the Winfrey bot spec, this script can vote 100% with 1 randomly chosen account.

If the complaint about Winfrey is blockchain bloat, Dr. Phil prescribes weight loss to address this. But this feature would only work if there are enough voters defined in the script. If you plan to use this script for one or two accounts, you'll probably want to adjust the VOTE_WEIGHT constant to something a bit lower.

Install

To use this Radiator bot:

Linux

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install ruby-full git openssl libssl1.0.0 libssl-dev
$ sudo apt-get upgrade
$ gem install bundler

macOS

$ gem install bundler

I've tested it on various versions of ruby. The oldest one I got it to work was:

ruby 2.0.0p645 (2015-04-13 revision 50299) [x86_64-darwin14.4.0]

First, clone this gist and install the dependencies:

$ git clone https://gist.github.com/61bcc2b821aa5acb24f7fc88921950c7.git drphil
$ cd drphil
$ bundle install

Then run it:

$ ruby drphil.rb

Dr. Phil will now do it's thing. Check here to see an updated version of this bot:

https://gist.github.com/inertia186/61bcc2b821aa5acb24f7fc88921950c7

Upgrade

Typically, you can upgrade to the latest version by this command, from the original directory you cloned into:

$ git pull

Usually, this works fine as long as you haven't modified anything. If you get an error, try this:

$ git stash --all
$ git pull --rebase
$ git stash pop

If you're still having problems, I suggest starting a new clone.

Troubleshooting

Problem: What does this error mean?

drphil.yml:1: syntax error, unexpected ':', expecting end-of-input

Solution: You ran `ruby drphil.yml` but you should run `ruby drphil.rb`.

Problem: Everything looks ok, but every time Dr. Phil tries to vote, I get this error:

Unable to vote with <account>.  Invalid version

Solution: You're trying to vote with an invalid key.

Make sure the .yml file voter items have the account name, followed by a space, followed by the account's WIF posting key. Also make sure you have removed the example accounts (social and bad.account are just for testing).