novasenco / digmbot

A simple IRC bot written in gawk with support for plugins.

digmbot

digmbot is a relatively simple IRC bot written in gawk which supports plugins.

Running

Simply run the executable with the desired arguments specified like so:

digmbot -v"key=value" -v"key2=value2" -v"key3=value3" etc

Arguments:

• nick
  • The nick you'd like the bot to have when it connects.
• owner
  • The nick the bot will obey for normal commands listed below.
• server
  • The hostname to connect to.
• port
  • The port number to connect to.
• plugindir
  • The directory in which to look for plugins.
• initfile
  • The path to a file which contains commands to run immediately at the start, such as for the bot to authenticate with the server or automatically join certain channels.

Any arguments left unspecified will default to the value in the setup() function. This should be trivial to change by editing the bot directly.

Normal commands

When digmbot is running, if it receives a PM from the owner with one of the following commands it will act accordingly:

• say
  • In the room/to the user specified by the second term, the bot will say everything from the third term onwards.
  • e.g.: /msg digmbot say #room what to say
• action
  • In the room/to the user specified by the second term, the bot will /me everything from the third term onwards.
  • e.g.: /msg digmbot action #room what to do
• join
  • The bot will join the room mentioned in the second term.
  • e.g.: /msg digmbot join #room
• part
  • The bot will part the room mentioned in the second term.
  • e.g.: /msg digmbot part #room
• reload
  • The bot will reload all plugins. Useful for, for example, adding a new plugin.
  • e.g.: /msg digmbot reload
• exit
  • The bot will exit.
  • e.g.: /msg digmbot exit

Plugins

The bot will attempt to treat everything found in the plugindir as a plugin. The files in there should be executable. Upon loading the plugin, digmbot will send the following information to the plugin via stdin. The first term will be the name of the key, then there will be a space, followed by the value corresponding to the key. Finally, a newline character separates everything.

• nick
• owner
• server
• port
• plugindir
• plugin
• endload

endload should always be the final line sent when loading a plugin. In theory other lines could be added before that one. After seeing endload, the plugin should return a regular expression (as interpreted by gawk) which will trigger the plugin.

When digmbot detects the regular expression matches something someone said, it sends the following items to the plugin, again via stdin:

• user
• room
• message
• endtrigger

Like when loading, when endtrigger is seen this indicates the end of digmbot's information for the plugin. The plugin should respond by printing with the one line of output which digmbot will print in the same room it saw the trigger message. Alternatively, the plugin can volunteer itself to be skipped and print nothing.

See bundled plugins for examples. Note that while the bundled examples are in awk, the plugins could be in any language.

Known issues

• digmbot relies on the system() and the shell (with globbing) to get the contents of the plugindir. In theory someone could install gawk on a system without a bourne-style shell somehow.
• digmbot can only have one owner.
• Plugins can only return one line of output.
• Plugins can only trigger upon a message from a user and not external sources such as a timer or webpage being updated.