zulip-botserver --config-file <path to botserverrc> --hostname <address> --port <port> 

Example: zulip-botserver --config-file ~/botserverrc

This program loads the bot configurations from the config file (botserverrc, here) and loads the bot modules. It then starts the server and fetches the requests to the above loaded modules and returns the success/failure result.

The --hostname and --port arguments are optional, and default to 127.0.0.1 and 5002 respectively.

The format for a configuration file is:

[helloworld] key=value email=helloworld-bot@zulip.com site=http://localhost token=abcd1234 

Is passed --use-env-vars instead of --config-file, the configuration can instead be provided via the ZULIP_BOTSERVER_CONFIG environment variable. This should be a JSON-formatted dictionary of bot names to dictionary of their configuration; for example:

ZULIP_BOTSERVER_CONFIG='{"helloworld":{"email":"helloworld-bot@zulip.com","key":"value","site":"http://localhost","token":"abcd1234"}}' \ zulip-botserver --use-env-vars