pmxbot 1004.4

IRC bot - full featured, yet extensible and customizable

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pmxbot

pmxbot is an IRC bot written in python. Originally built for internal use, it’s been sanitized and set free upon the world.

Commands

pmxbot listens to commands prefixed by a ‘!’ If it’s a command it knows it will reply, take an action, etc. It can search the web, quote you, track karma, make decisions, and do just about anything else you could want. It logs text in a sqlite3 database, and eventually we’ll write a web interface to it.

Contains

pmxbot will respond to things you say if it detects words and phrases it’s been told to recognize. For example, mention sql on rails.

Requirements

pmxbot requires python, of course. Probably 2.5+. It also requires a few python packages:

• python-irclib

• pyyaml

• simplejson or json

• feedparser

• httplib2

• sqlite3

Optionally nosetests for the test suite.

The web interface requires cherrypy and jinja2.

Testing

We have a basic nose test suite that does some functional tests with an included TCL IRC daemon, and some basic unit tests as well. Just run them from the pmxbot root directory with “nosetests” and it should do it all for you. You’ll need TCL and nosetests to do it though.

Configuration

Configuration is based on very easy YAML files. Check out config.yaml in the source tree for an example.

Usage

Once you’ve setup a config file, you just need to call pmxbot config.yaml and it will join and connect. We recommend running pmxbot under djb’s daemontools to make it automatically restart if it crashes.

Adding a custom, local feature

Adding a new feature is easy, you just need to add them to a local_extensions file, following the established convention. The files to load are specified in the local_extensions configuration setting. All files in the list are run with execfile, so they inherit the existing globals. As a result you can assume that most things you’ll need are already imported, like @command, @contains, re, urllib, httplib2 and get_html. There’s an example in local.py that you can use as the basis for yours..

A command (!g) gets the @command deocator:

@command("tinytear", aliases=('tt', 'tear', 'cry'), doc="I cry a tiny tear for you.")
def tinytear(client, event, channel, nick, rest):
      if rest:
              return "/me sheds a single tear for %s" % rest
      else:
              return "/me sits and cries as a single tear slowly trickles down its cheek"

A response (when someone says something) uses the @contains decorator:

@contains("sqlonrails")
def yay_sor(client, event, channel, nick, rest):
      karmaChange(botbase.logger.db, 'sql on rails', 1)
      return "Only 76,417 lines..."

Web Interface

pmxbot includes a web server for allowing users to view the logs, read the help, and check karma. You specify the host, port, base path, logo, title, etc with the same YAML config file. Just run like pmxbotweb config.yaml and it will start up. I suggest using a tool like supervisor, daemontools, cherryd or somesuch to keep it running.