ircbot

ircbot

Simple IRC bot written in golang. Mostly a toy.

It can be built as any common go application.

Running ircbot

It accepts a single command-line parameter, -config, allowing to pass the name of the config file to read (which is config.json by default).

A typical configuration file will look as follows:

{
    "server": "irc.mynetwork.com",
    "port": 6697,
    "use_tls": true,
    "nick": "IrcbotBot",
    "password": "mysecretpassword",
    "use_sasl": true,
    "channels": ["#channel1", "#channel2"],
    "db_dsn": "sqlite:///srv/ircbot/ircbot.db
}

To generate the schema of the database, run:

sqlite3 ircbot.db < schema.sql

Available Commands.

You can list the implemented commands using !help

ACLs

Only people listed as admins in the configuration will have free access to all commands.

You can grant one user, or a channel the right to use a command as follows:

# Allow a user to use a command
you > !acl_add contact_add SomeFriend
IrcbotBot>	The ACL was saved.
# See the acl
you > !acl_get contact_add
IrcbotBot>	ACL for contact_add
IrcbotBot>	Users:
IrcbotBot>		you
IrcbotBot>		SomeFriend
IrcbotBot>	Channels:
# Allow all users in a channel to use a command
you > !acl_add contact_add #thischan
IrcbotBot>	The ACL was saved.
# Remove the authorization to a user
you > !acl_remove contact_add SomeFriend
IrcbotBot>	The ACL was succesfully removed.

How to use the bot

You just need to initialize it in your main program

    irc, err := ircbot.Init("config.json")
    if err != nil {
        panic(err)
    }
    // Add your commands here
    //
    // Now run it
    irc.Run()

How to add commands

As a reference, commands to manage a contact list are provided under example/

Basically, you have to pick a name for the command, and a callback to be called from it.

The signature of this callback needs to be ircbot.CommandAction. So for example:

    func sayHello(args []string, m *hbot.Message, i *ircbot.IrcBot) bool {
        greeted := m.From
        if args[0] != "" {
            greeted = args[0]
        }
        i.Reply(m, fmt.Sprintf("Hello, %s!", greeted))
        return true
    }

    hello := irc.AddCommand("greet", sayHello)

now we want to define the arguments that this command accepts. Those will be passed to the callback in the args slice. We also want to set a help message. Use named parameters in the regular expression for the arguments as it will print out a nicer help message later on. Finally, we want this to work in public channels, so we call AllowChannel(). If we want to allow greeting in query, we'll need to also add AllowPrivate()

    hello.Arguments("(?P<name>\\w+)?")
    hello.SetHelp("Cheers someone").AllowChannel()

A more complex example: a contact list

Very simple interface, you add a new contact with !contact_add, and retrieve it with !contact_get, but it shows how to store and retrieve information in the database.

FAQ

Q: Is ircbot useful for X? A: No.