Simplest solution for a bot which posts to a google hangouts chat?

Question

Our house (I live with 5 roommates) uses a google hangouts chat from our phones to communicate various things. Lately we've been discussing some scheduled things, like a rotation for cleaning certain parts of the house, and I thought it would be useful to have a bot announce the pertinent information about the schedule on a hangouts chat.

I'm wondering what the best way to go about this is.

There are two approaches I see:

1) Make an app using google hangouts API which sends messages at the correct interval, connect to this app, use it to chat.

2) Make a google account for a bot which we connect to the hangout, make it send messages at the correct interval.

I like number 2 because I wouldn't have to interfere with the app to change the bot's code, but I'm sort of at a loss for where to start.

Number 1 seems okay, but I'm also not sure I can connect to a google hangouts app on my phone the same way I can just create a chat with friends.

How should I go about doing this task?

Answer 1

Any preference for the language used to code in?

My immediate thought is to tie into the google calendar for a tasklist and have an app read from that via rest.

Then post to the correct hangout (again via rest is probably simplest): you can use Fiddler to find what is being done to post to hangouts, or look through here for an API oriented way to do it.

Let me know if you need more information:) Hopefully what is here should see you steering in the right direction:)

Answer 2

Google calendar will popup notices on your phone. You could just share the calendar with your roommate, and skip the hangout notices altogether