Pepper.pl Discord Bot

A high-performance Discord bot that scrapes Pepper.pl for deals, provides automated notifications, and allows users to set up custom price alerts. Built for speed and reliability using asynchronous Python.

Overview

This bot serves as a bridge between the Pepper.pl deal platform and Discord. It bypasses the need for RSS feeds by directly scraping the website using optimized HTML parsing. It supports on-demand searching, personal keyword alerts (sent via DM), and automated channel feeds for specific categories (e.g., "GPU < 3000 PLN").

Features

• Deal Searching: Query Pepper.pl directly from Discord (/pepper [query], /pepperhot).
• Personal Alerts (PepperWatch): Users can subscribe to keywords (e.g., "RTX 4070") with optional price caps. The bot checks every 15 minutes and DMs matches.
• Automated Categories: Server admins can set up dedicated channels for specific deal categories (e.g., "gaming", "home-automation") with customizable schedules and filters.
• Flight Deal Digest: Daily automated report of flight deals.
• High-Performance Scraping: Uses selectolax (C-based HTML parser) and Vue.js hydration data for fast, reliable extraction.
• Duplicate Protection: Tracks sent deals in SQLite to prevent spamming the same offer twice.

Tech Stack

• Language: Python 3.10+
• Framework: discord.py (Asynchronous interaction-based bot)
• Scraping: selectolax (Ultra-fast HTML parsing), aiohttp (Async HTTP requests)
• Database: aiosqlite (Async SQLite3 for lightweight, file-based persistence)
• Configuration: python-dotenv

Setup

Prerequisites

• Python 3.10 or higher
• A Discord Bot Token (from Discord Developer Portal)
• uv (Recommended for 10-100x faster dependency resolution)

Installation

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/Kehlanii/PepperPLDiscord.git
   cd PepperPLDiscord

2. Fast Setup (Recommended with uv):

   # Create venv and install dependencies in one go (extremely fast)
   uv venv
   source .venv/bin/activate  # or .venv\Scripts\activate on Windows
   uv pip install -r requirements.txt

   Alternative (Traditional pip):

   python3 -m venv venv
   source venv/bin/activate
   pip install -r requirements.txt

3. Configuration: Create a .env file in the root directory:

   touch .env

   Add your bot token:

   DISCORD_BOT_TOKEN=your_token_here

4. Run the bot:

   python bot.py

Commands

The bot supports both Slash Commands (modern) and Text Commands (classic, faster).

Command Reference

Category	Slash Command	Text Command	Example
Alerts	/pepperwatch add	p watch:query < price	p watch:Rzym < 600
	/pepperwatch list	p alerts or p list	p alerts
	/pepperwatch remove	p unwatch:query	p unwatch:Rzym
Search	/pepper query	p query	p rtx 4070
	/pepperhot	p hot	p hot
	/pepper_group slug	p group:slug	p group:elektronika
Categories	/category preview	p preview:slug	p preview:lego
	/category list	p cat list	p cat list
	/category add	p cat add:slug ...	p cat add:gry daily 09:00 #deals
	/category remove	p cat rm:slug	p cat rm:gry
	/category pause	p cat pause:slug	p cat pause:gry
	/category resume	p cat resume:slug	p cat resume:gry
	/category trigger	p cat run:slug	p cat run:gry
Utility	/pepperclean	p clean [limit]	p clean 50
	/flynow	p fly	p fly

Legacy Command List

Command	Description	Permissions
/pepper [query]	Search for deals matching a keyword.	Everyone
/pepperhot	Fetch the current hottest deals from the homepage.	Everyone
/pepper_group [slug]	Get deals from a specific category (e.g., gry, elektronika).	Everyone
/pepperwatch add [query] [max_price]	Add a personal alert. DMs you when found.	Everyone
/pepperwatch list	View your active personal alerts.	Everyone
/pepperwatch remove [query]	Remove a personal alert.	Everyone
/category add [slug] ...	Setup an automated feed for a category into a channel.	Admin
/category list	List all active category feeds on the server.	Everyone
/category pause/resume	Temporarily stop/start a category feed.	Admin
/flynow	Manually trigger the flight deal report.	Admin

Architecture

The bot is structured around a central asynchronous loop with several key components:

1. The Scraper (utils/scraper.py)

Instead of using heavy browser automation (Selenium/Playwright) or slow parsers (BeautifulSoup), this bot uses selectolax.

• Strategy: It attempts to locate the Vue.js hydration data (data-vue3 attribute) injected into the HTML. This contains raw JSON data, which is faster and more reliable to parse than DOM elements.
• Fallback: If Vue data is missing, it falls back to CSS selectors to scrape the rendered HTML.

2. Database (utils/db.py)

Uses SQLite for persistence. Key tables:

• sent_deals: Tracks IDs of deals already posted to prevent duplicates.
• alerts: Stores user-defined keywords and price limits.
• alert_history: Prevents a user from being alerted twice for the same deal.
• category_configs: Stores settings for server-wide automated feeds.

3. Task Loops (cogs/pepper.py)

The bot runs background tasks using discord.ext.tasks:

• Alerts Task: Runs every 15 mins. Scrapes search results for every user query and DMs matches.
• Category Task: Runs every minute. Checks if any configured category needs to be scraped based on its schedule (Daily/Weekly/etc).
• Flight Task: Runs daily at 08:00 AM (configurable).

Configuration

Core settings are defined in utils/config.py.

• FLIGHT_SCHEDULE_HOUR: Hour to send flight reports (Default: 8).
• WATCH_INTERVAL_MINUTES: Frequency of checking user alerts (Default: 15).
• DEFAULT_SEARCH_LIMIT: Number of results to show in search (Default: 7).

Deployment

For production, it is recommended to run the bot as a systemd service.

1. Create service file: /etc/systemd/system/pepperbot.service

   [Unit]
   Description=Pepper.pl Discord Bot
   After=network.target
   
   [Service]
   Type=simple
   User=your_user
   WorkingDirectory=/path/to/PepperPLDiscord
   ExecStart=/path/to/PepperPLDiscord/venv/bin/python bot.py
   Restart=always
   RestartSec=10
   
   [Install]
   WantedBy=multi-user.target

2. Enable and start:

   sudo systemctl enable pepperbot
   sudo systemctl start pepperbot

Known Issues

• Rate Limiting: Aggressive scraping may trigger Cloudflare protection or IP bans from Pepper.pl. The scraper includes basic delays and user-agent rotation logic, but use reasonable intervals.
• Hardcoded Flight Channel: The flight deal channel ID is currently hardcoded in Config.FLIGHT_CHANNEL_ID. This needs to be changed in code before deployment.