NAME¶
Bot::BasicBot - simple irc bot baseclass
SYNOPSIS¶
# with all defaults
my $bot = Bot::BasicBot->new( channels => ["#bottest"] );
$bot->run();
# with all known options
my $bot = Bot::BasicBot->new(
server => "irc.example.com",
port => "6667",
channels => ["#bottest"],
nick => "basicbot",
alt_nicks => ["bbot", "simplebot"],
username => "bot",
name => "Yet Another Bot",
ignore_list => [qw(dipsy dadadodo laotse)],
charset => "utf-8", # charset the bot assumes the channel is using
);
$bot->run();
DESCRIPTION¶
Basic bot system designed to make it easy to do simple bots, optionally forking
longer processes (like searches) concurrently in the background.
There are several examples of bots using Bot::BasicBot in the examples/ folder
in the Bot::BasicBot tarball. If you installed Bot::BasicBot through CPAN, see
http://jerakeen.org/programming/Bot-BasicBot for more docs and examples.
A quick summary, though - You want to define your own package that subclasses
Bot::BasicBot, override various methods (documented below), then call
new() and
run() on it.
STARTING THE BOT¶
new( key => value, .. )
Creates a new instance of the class. Name value pairs may be passed which will
have the same effect as calling the method of that name with the value
supplied. Returns a Bot::BasicBot object, that you can call 'run' on later.
eg:
my $bot = Bot::BasicBot->new( nick => 'superbot', channels => [ '#superheroes' ] );
run()
Runs the bot. Hands the control over to the POE core.
METHODS TO OVERRIDE¶
In your Bot::BasicBot subclass, you want to override some of the following
methods to define how your bot works. These are all object methods - the
(implicit) first parameter to all of them will be the bot object.
init()
called when the bot is created, as part of
new(). Override to provide
your own init. Return a true value for a successful init, or undef if you
failed, in which case
new() will die.
said($args)
This is the main method that you'll want to override in your subclass - it's the
one called by default whenever someone says anything that we can hear, either
in a public channel or to us in private that we shouldn't ignore.
You'll be passed a hashref that contains the arguments described below. Feel
free to alter the values of this hash - it won't be used later on.
- who
- Who said it (the nick that said it)
- raw_nick
- The raw IRC nick string of the person who said it. Only
really useful if you want more security for some reason.
- channel
- The channel in which they said it. Has special value
"msg" if it was in a message. Actually, you can send a message
to many channels at once in the IRC spec, but no-one actually does this so
this is just the first one in the list.
- body
- The body of the message (i.e. the actual text)
- address
- The text that indicates how we were addressed. Contains the
string "msg" for private messages, otherwise contains the string
off the text that was stripped off the front of the message if we were
addressed, e.g. "Nick: ". Obviously this can be simply checked
for truth if you just want to know if you were addressed or not.
You should return what you want to say. This can either be a simple string
(which will be sent back to whoever was talking to you as a message or in
public depending on how they were talking) or a hashref that contains values
that are compatible with say (just changing the body and returning the
structure you were passed works very well.)
Returning undef will cause nothing to be said.
emoted( $args )
This is a secondary method that you may wish to override. It gets called when
someone in channel 'emotes', instead of talking. In its default configuration,
it will simply pass anything emoted on channel through to the "said"
handler.
"emoted" receives the same data hash as "said".
chanjoin( $mess )
Called when someone joins a channel. $mess is an object similar to a
said() message, $mess->{who} is the nick of the user who joined,
$mess->{channel} is the channel they joined.
This is a do-nothing implementation, override this in your subclass.
chanpart( $mess )
Called when someone leaves a channel. $mess is an object similar to a
said() message, $mess->{who} is the nick of the user who left,
$mess->{channel} is the channel they left.
This is a do-nothing implementation, override this in your subclass.
got_names( $mess )
Whenever we have been given a definitive list of 'who is in the channel', this
function will be called. As usual, $mess is a hash. $mess->{channel} will
be the channel we have information for, $mess->{names} is a hashref, where
the keys are the nicks of the users, and the values are more hashes,
containing the two keys 'op' and 'voice', indicating if the user is a chanop
or voiced respectively.
The reply value is ignored.
Normally, I wouldn't override this method - instead, just use the names call
when you want to know who's in the channel. Override this only if you want to
be able to do something as soon as possible. Also be aware that the names list
can be changed by other events - kicks, joins, etc, and this method won't be
called when that happens.
topic( $mess )
Called when the topic of the channel changes. $mess->{channel} is the channel
the topic was set in, $mess->{who} is the nick of the user who changed the
channel, and $mess->{topic} will be the new topic of the channel.
nick_change( $mess )
When a user changes nicks, this will be called. $mess looks like
{ from => "old_nick",
to => "new_nick",
}
kicked( $mess )
Called when a user is kicked from the channel. $mess looks like:
{ channel => "#channel",
who => "nick",
kicked => "kicked",
reason => "reason",
}
The reply value is ignored.
tick()
This is an event called every regularly. The function should return the amount
of time until the tick event should next be called. The default tick is called
5 seconds after the bot starts, and the default implementation returns '0',
which disables the tick. Override this and return non-zero values to have an
ongoing tick event.
Use this function if you want the bot to do something periodically, and don't
want to mess with 'real' POE things.
Call the schedule_tick event to schedule a tick event without waiting for the
next tick.
help
This is the other method that you should override. This is the text that the bot
will respond to if someone simply says help to it. This should be considered a
special case which you should not attempt to process yourself. Saying help to
a bot should have no side effects whatsoever apart from returning this text.
connected
An optional method to override, gets called after we have connected to the
server
BOT METHODS¶
There are a few methods you can call on the bot object to do things. These are
as follows:
schedule_tick(time)
Causes the tick event to be called in 'time' seconds (or 5 seconds if time is
left unspecified). Note that if the tick event is due to be called already,
this will override it, you can't schedule multiple future events with this
funtction.
forkit
This method allows you to fork arbitrary background processes. They will run
concurrently with the main bot, returning their output to a handler routine.
You should call "forkit" in response to specific events in your
"said" routine, particularly for longer running processes like
searches, which will block the bot from receiving or sending on channel whilst
they take place if you don't fork them.
"forkit" takes the following arguments:
- run
- A coderef to the routine which you want to run. Bear in
mind that the routine doesn't automatically get the text of the query -
you'll need to pass it in "arguments" (see below) if you want to
use it at all.
Apart from that, your "run" routine just needs to print its output
to "STDOUT", and it will be passed on to your designated
handler.
- handler
- Optional. A method name within your current package which
we can return the routine's data to. Defaults to the built-in method
"say_fork_return" (which simply sends data to channel).
- body
- Optional. Use this to pass on the body of the incoming
message that triggered you to fork this process. Useful for interactive
proceses such as searches, so that you can act on specific terms in the
user's instructions.
- who
- The nick of who you want any response to reach (optional
inside a channel.)
- channel
- Where you want to say it to them in. This may be the
special channel "msg" if you want to speak to them directly
- address
- Optional. Setting this to a true value causes the person to
be addressed (i.e. to have "Nick: " prepended to the front of
returned message text if the response is going to a public forum.
- arguments
- Optional. This should be an anonymous array of values,
which will be passed to your "run" routine. Bear in mind that
this is not intelligent - it will blindly spew arguments at
"run" in the order that you specify them, and it is the
responsibility of your "run" routine to pick them up and make
sense of them.
say( key => value, .. )
Say something to someone. You should pass the following arguments:
- who
- The nick of who you are saying this to (optional inside a
channel.)
- channel
- Where you want to say it to them in. This may be the
special channel "msg" if you want to speak to them directly
- body
- The body of the message. I.e. what you want to say.
- address
- Optional. Setting this to a true value causes the person to
be addressed (i.e. to have "Nick: " prepended to the front of
the message text if this message is going to a pulbic forum.
You can also make non-OO calls to "say", which will be interpreted as
coming from a process spawned by "forkit". The routine will
serialise any data it is sent, and throw it to STDOUT, where POE::Wheel::Run
can pass it on to a handler.
emote( key => value, .. )
"emote" will return data to channel, but emoted (as if you'd said
"/me writes a spiffy new bot" in most clients). It takes the same
arguments as "say", listed above.
reply($mess, $body)
Reply to a message $mess. Will reply to an incoming message with the text
'$body', in a privmsg if $mess was a privmsg, in channel if not, and prefixes
if $mess was prefixed. Mostly a shortcut method - it's roughly equivalent to
$mess->{body} = $body; $self->say($mess);
channel_data
ATTRIBUTES¶
Get or set methods. Changing most of these values when connected won't cause
sideffects. e.g. changing the server will not cause a disconnect and a
reconnect to another server.
Attributes that accept multiple values always return lists and either accept an
arrayref or a complete list as an argument.
The usual way of calling these is as keys to the hash passed to the 'new'
method.
server
The server we're going to connect to. Defaults to "irc.perl.org".
port
The port we're going to use. Defaults to "6667"
password
The server password for the server we're going to connect to. Defaults to undef.
ssl
A boolean to indicate whether or not the server we're going to connect to is an
SSL server. Defaults to 0.
nick
The nick we're going to use. Defaults to five random letters and numbers
followed by the word "bot"
alt_nicks
Alternate nicks that this bot will be known by. These are not nicks that the bot
will try if it's main nick is taken, but rather other nicks that the bot will
recognise if it is addressed in a public channel as the nick. This is useful
for bots that are replacements for other bots...e.g, your bot can answer to
the name "infobot: " even though it isn't really.
username
The username we'll claim to have at our ip/domain. By default this will be the
same as our nick.
name
The name that the bot will identify itself as. Defaults to "$nick bot"
where $nick is the nick that the bot uses.
channels
The channels we're going to connect to.
quit_message
The quit message. Defaults to "Bye".
ignore_list
The list of irc nicks to ignore
public messages from (normally other
bots.) Useful for stopping bot cascades.
charset
IRC has no defined character set for putting high-bit chars into channel. In
general, people tend to assume latin-1, but in case your channel thinks
differently, the bot can be told about different charsets.
This feature requires perl 5.8+, I'm not fannying about with charsets under any
other version of perl.
flood
Set to '1' to disable the built-in flood protection of POE::Compoent::IRC
STATES¶
These are the POE states that we register in order to listen for IRC events. For
the most part you don't need to worry about these, unless you want to override
them to do something clever.
start_state
Called when we start. Used to fire a "connect to irc server event"
reconnect
Connects the bot to the IRC server. Called 1 second after the 'start' event.
in an ideal world, this will never get called again - we schedule it for 'x'
seconds in the future, and whenever we see a server ping we reset this counter
again. This means that it'll get run if we haven't seen anything from the
server for a while, so we can assume that something bad has happened. At that
point we shotgun the IRC session and restart everything, so we reconnect to
the server.
This is by far the most reliable way I have found of ensuring that a bot will
reconnect to a server after it's lost a network connection for some reason.
By default, the timeout is 300 seconds. It can be set by changing
$Bot::BasicBot::RECONNECT_TIMEOUT.
stop_state
Called when we're stopping. Shutdown the bot correctly.
irc_001_state
Called when we connect to the irc server. This is used to tell the irc server
that we'd quite like to join the channels.
We also ignore ourselves. We don't want to hear what we have to say.
irc_disconnected_state
Called if we are disconnected from the server. Logs the error and schedules a
reconnect event.
irc_error_state
Called if there is an irc server error. Logs the error and schedules a reconnect
event.
irc_kicked_state
Called on kick. If we're kicked then it's best to do nothing. Bots are normally
called in wrapper that restarts them if we die, which may end us up in a busy
loop. Anyway, if we're not wanted, the best thing to do would be to hang
around off channel.
irc_join_state
Called if someone joins. Used for nick tracking
irc_nick_state
Called if someone changes nick. Used for nick tracking.
irc_mode_state
irc_said_state
Called if we recieve a private or public message. This formats it into a nicer
format and calls 'said'
irc_emoted_state
Called if someone "emotes" on channel, rather than directly saying
something. Currently passes the emote striaght to "irc_said_state"
which deals with it as if it was a spoken phrase.
irc_received_state
Called by "irc_said_state" and "irc_emoted_state" in order
to format channel input into a more copable-with format.
irc_ping_state
The most reliable way I've found of doing auto-server-rejoin is to listen for
pings. Every ping we get, we put off rejoining the server for another few
mins. If we haven't heard a ping in a while, the rejoin code will get called.
Recently, I've adapted this for servers that don't send pings very often, and
reset the counter any time _anything_ interesting happens.
You can change the amount of time the bot waits between events before calling a
reconnect event by changing $Bot::BasicBot::RECONNECT_TIMEOUT to a value in
seconds. The default is '500'.
irc_chanjoin_state
Called if someone joins a channel.
irc_chanpart_state
Called if someone parts a channel.
irc_chan_received_state
Called by "irc_chanjoin_state" and "irc_chanpart_state" in
order to format channel joins and parts into a more copable-with format.
fork_close_state
Called whenever a process forked by POE::Wheel::Run (in "forkit")
terminates, and allows us to delete the object and associated data from
memory.
fork_error_state
Called if a process forked by POE::Wheel::Run (in "forkit") hits an
error condition for any reason. Does nothing, but can be overloaded in derived
classes to be more useful
tick_state
the POE state for the tick event. Reschedules a tick event for the future if the
tick method returned a value.
names_state
names_done_state
topic_raw_state
topic_state
OTHER METHODS¶
AUTOLOAD
Bot::BasicBot implements AUTOLOAD for sending arbitrary states to the underlying
POE::Component::IRC compoment. So for a $bot object, sending
$bot->foo("bar");
is equivalent to
$poe_kernel->post(BASICBOT_ALIAS, "foo", "bar");
log
Logs the message. This method merely prints to STDERR - If you want smarter
logging, override this method - it will have simple text strings passed in @_.
ignore_nick($nick)
Return true if this nick should be ignored. Ignores anything in the ignore list
nick_strip
Takes a nick and hostname (of the form "nick!hostname") and returns
just the nick
charset_decode( foo, bar, baz )
Converts a string of bytes into a perl string, using the bot's charset. (under
perls before 5.8, just returns the thing it's passed.
Takes a list of strings, returns a list of strings, this is useful in the
contexts that I tend to be calling it from. Bytes that cannot be decoded are
converted to '?' symbols - see
http://search.cpan.org/~dankogai/Encode-2.09/Encode.pm#Handling_Malformed_Data
charset_encode( foo, bar, baz )
Converts a list of perl strings into a list of byte sequences, using the bot's
charset. See charset_decode.
AUTHOR¶
Tom Insam <tom@jerakeen.org>
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
the same terms as Perl itself.
CREDITS¶
The initial version of Bot::BasicBot was written by Mark Fowler, and many thanks
are due to him.
Nice code for dealing with emotes thanks to Jo Walsh.
Various patches from Tom Insam, including much improved rejoining, AUTOLOAD
stuff, better interactive help, and a few API tidies.
Maintainership for a while was in the hands of Simon Kent
<simon@hitherto.net>. Don't know what he did. :-)
I recieved patches for tracking joins and parts from Silver, sat on them for two
months, and have finally applied them. Thanks, dude. He also sent me changes
for the tick event API, which made sense.
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS¶
Bot::BasicBot is based on POE, and really needs the latest version as of writing
(0.22), since POE::Wheel::Run (used for forking) is still under development,
and the interface recently changed. With earlier versions of POE, forking will
not work, and the makefile process will carp if you have < 0.22. Sorry.
You also need POE::Component::IRC.
BUGS¶
During the make, make test make install process, POE will moan about its kernel
not being run. I'll try and gag it in future releases, but hey, release early,
release often, and it's not a fatal error. It just looks untidy.
Don't call your bot "0".
Nick tracking blatantly doesn't work yet. In Progress.
"fork_error_state" handlers sometimes seem to cause the bot to
segfault. I'm not yet sure if this is a POE::Wheel::Run problem, or a problem
in our implementation.
SEE ALSO¶
POE, POE::Component::IRC
Possibly Infobot, at
http://www.infobot.org