Chatty

A multi-platform chat bot framework

Description

Chatty is a Python 3 package designed to map any chat platform to the same standardized interface. The goal is to allow a chat bot to be remapped from one platform to another, or even to multiple platforms at the same time, with nothing more than a minor change in configuration.

Chatty is organized around 3 core abstractions:

• Signals: A signal is any single indivisible element of communication, such as a message or a notification, which may or may not contain content or data of some sort. Signals always come with certain attached metadata which indicates where the signal originated, who it was sent to, when it was sent, etc.
• Bots: A bot is an endpoint where inbound signals are handled, and outbound signals are generated.
• Sessions: A session is an open channel over which signals can be sent and/or received by a bot.

Usage

from chatty.bots.decorator import as_bot
from chatty.configuration import get_config
from chatty.sessions.slack import SlackSession
from chatty.signals.message import Message
from chatty.signals.metadata import SignalMetaData


# FRIENDLY REMINDER: Never store bot tokens or login passwords in your source
# code, and be careful that they aren't in a place where they could get picked 
# up by source control!

# Load the bot's handle and login token from the config file.
handle, token = get_config('Slack', '~/.chatty_config', ['handle'], ['token'])


@as_bot
def converse(session, signal):
    """Say 'hi!' back on the same channel whenever someone says 'hello'"""
    if isinstance(signal, Message) and 'hello' in str(signal.content).lower():
        meta_data = SignalMetaData(
            origin=handle,
            addressees=[signal.meta_data.room or signal.meta_data.origin],
            response_to=signal.meta_data.identifier
        )
        return Message(meta_data, 'hi!')


session = SlackSession(token)        # Create a new Slack session
session.add_bot(converse)            # Connect our bot to it
session.join(timeout=5 * 60)         # Hang out for 5 minutes
session.close()                      # Drop offline

Current Development Status

Chatty is brand new, and has currently only been tested for basic messaging via email (imap & smtp), xmpp, and Slack. See the TODO list for a list of other platforms that should eventually be supported.

Contributing

If you have a need for a specific platform or protocol to be supported, I'll be happy to accept pull requests. If you're looking to contribute but need a place to start, please see the TODO list. There are plenty of platforms and functionality yet to be added. Each supported platform has its own module in the chatty/sessions folder, and its dependencies should be added to the extras_require parameter in setup.py. Tests go in the test_chatty folder and are named with test_ prefixed to the name of the module being tested.

Submitted code should adhere to pep8 guidelines and should, in general, follow the conventions established elsewhere in the Chatty code base. For the sake of clarity, please note that by submitting a pull request, you agree, as per standard practice (and also the GitHub terms of service) to make your code available under the same license that governs this project.