Scheduled Reboots
Issue
Occasionally, the bot's programming seems to be unresponsive or the server does not have enough resources.
Possible Solution
When using the free providers we will need to restart the bot to avoid accumulating temporary data that may affect its performance. In that case an easy solution to implement is to schedule restarts, these restarts will not need to scan the QR again.
Docker and Pm2 One way to do it if you are using docker could be to implement in your docker image Pm2 and with pm2-runtime start your container with a cron pattern.
In the following Dockerfile we can see how we start the project with a pattern 0 */12 * * * that means that it will restart every 12 hours
Dockerfile
# Use the official Node.js image as the base image for building the application.
FROM node:21-alpine3.18 as builder
# Enable Corepack and prepare for PNPM installation
RUN corepack enable && corepack prepare pnpm@latest --activate
ENV PNPM_HOME=/usr/local/bin
# Set the working directory inside the container
WORKDIR /app
# Copy package.json and pnpm-lock.yaml files to the working directory
COPY package*.json pnpm-lock.yaml ./
# Install git for potential dependencies
RUN apk add --no-cache git
# Install PM2 globally using PNPM
RUN pnpm install pm2 -g
# Copy the application source code into the container
COPY . .
# Install dependencies using PNPM
RUN pnpm install
# Create a new stage for deployment
FROM builder as deploy
# Copy only necessary files and directories for deployment
COPY --from=builder /app/src ./src
COPY --from=builder /app/package.json /app/pnpm-lock.yaml ./
# Install production dependencies using frozen lock file
RUN pnpm install --frozen-lockfile --production
# Define the command to start the application using PM2 runtime
CMD ["pm2-runtime", "start", "./src/app.js", "--cron", "0 */12 * * *"]
Remember that this is an alternative solution, and it is possible that its implementation could be improved.
Resources
Modularize
Learn how to modularise flows so that you can have a more maintainable bot.
Send Message
How to send a message via HTTP to start conversations, you can send multimedia as well.
Dockerizer
A good practice is to dockerise your bots to make them more maintainable and effective.
Events
Learning about events will make us more fluent when creating chatbots.