Raoul

Yet another useless IRC bot, written in javascript and running on node.js, and providing an SQLite or CouchDB store. You are free to provide your own store backend. This is a pretty wrong use for CouchDB but I wanted to get my hands on it.

Synopsys

Raoul will:

• Record everything one says in its store
• Randomly use those quotes to answer when you address him (or intelligently if your store implements it... Up to you!)
• Use watchers to handle specific actions

Installation

raoul depends on a few other modules, you can either install them globally:

npm install irc-js request sprintf sqlite couch-client

... or for your bot only, to do so:

cd raoul/
npm bundle

that will create a node_modules directory and compile/install the required modules.

Example

bot.js

var raoul = require('./lib/raoul'),
    exchange_watcher  = require('./lib/watchers/exchange'),
    translate_watcher = require('./lib/watchers/exchange'),
    weather_watcher   = require('./lib/watchers/exchange');

var options = {
  irc: { // to pass to the internal IRC-js object
    server: 'irc.freenode.net',
    nick: 'mybot',
    encoding: 'utf-8'
  },
  store: { // will use 'dummy' if not set
    backend: 'couchdb',
    hostname: 'localhost',
    port: 5984,
    db: 'mybot'
  },
  altnicks: ['myb0t', 'mybot_'],
  autoreply: [30, 60], // Will throw a random quote between each 30-60 msgs (random)
  channels: ['#mychan'],
  nspassword: 'foo', // Nickserv password
  ping_delay: 180000, // send ping to server every 3 minutes
  timeout_delay: 60000 // consider dead if no pong within 1 minute
};

var bot = new raoul(options);
bot.watch_for(new exchange_watcher({ key: 'foo' }));
bot.watch_for(new weather_watcher({ key: 'bar' }));
bot.watch_for(new translate_watcher());

bot.connect();

Usage

Options

The option object has the following attributes:

• irc: The options for the internal IRC-js object, see its docs.
• store (Optional): If set, use the backend defined, if not, will use the dummy one, which does nothing.
• altnicks: alternate nicknames
• autoreply: [min, max] if set, the bot will throw a random quote after having seen between min and max messages (randomly)
• ping_delay: time between each PING sent to the server, to detect disconnections
• timeout_delay: if we haven't received a PONG within that time, we'll consider ourselves disconnected

Watchers

Watchers are easy to implement, see in the lib/watchers directory to get an idea. Basically it is an object that must have at least those 3 properties: name, regex and handler.

The handler is a function that takes 2 arguments, message, which is the message it triggered on, and match, which is the array containing the captured parts, returned by the regex you set.

The this keyword inside the handler will refer to the bot instance.

If the handler returns true, there will be no further processing, so if you want to implement something like an infobot that must catch everything, don't return true in your handler.

Provided Watchers

• translate: Uses google translate REST API.
• weather: Uses the Worl Weather Online API, you'll need a free key.
• exchange: Uses the Exchange Rate API, you'll need a free key.

Stores

As watchers, you can check how to implement stores in the lib/stores directory.

The stores option attribute you pass to the bot will be passed to the store constructor, so this is where you can set your password and stuff, if needed.

Your own store must provide at least those 2 methods:

• random_reply(message, callback)
• save_message(message)

CouchDB

Your CouchDB database will need a _design_tools document such as:

{
  "_id": "_design/tools",
  "language": "javascript",
  "views": {
     "random": {
         "map": "function(doc) {if (doc.type == 'quote' && doc.random) {emit(doc.random, doc);}}",
         "reduce": "_count"
      }
  }
}

SQLite

Create an SQLite 3 database such as:

CREATE TABLE quotes (id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT, quote TEXT);

In the options, setup your store such as:

store: {
  backend: 'sqlite',
  file: 'yourdb.db'
}

See Also

• Jerk - A fun little IRC bot library for node.js. Ridiculously simple to set-up and get going!
• IRC-js - An IRC library for node.js

Credits

Written by Renaud Drousies

Raoul is UNLICENSED