phpIrcBot

An irc bot implemented in php, roughly a clone of irccat with some extra features I liked from other bots thrown in.

For the love of {insert deity} why?

1. I was bored
2. I kinda wanted to learn stuff
3. I wanted a reasonable project to try out jenkins features and plugins for php code analysis
4. I plan to write this project is several languages, php is an easy prototype (for me)
5. To annoy my cow-workers

Note I run my instance of phpIrcBot under the name overlord. Anywhere you see overlord substitute the name of the ircbot you have configured.

Installation

You can currently chose to install via Pear or download/checkout the code.

Pear install

pear install channel://pear.b3cft.com/IRCBot

Download

Download or clone the project from phpIrcBot Downloads This code currently (Dec 2011) relies on two pear projects:

pear install channel://pear.gradwell.com/autoloader
pear install channel://pear.b3cft.com/CoreUtils

Configure

From the downloaded/cloned version you can copy the example config in src/data/ircbot.example.ini

From the pear installed version you can copy the example config located in pear's data_dir, if you don't know where this is you can use:

pear config-get data_dir

the pear packaged version will be inside an IRCBot directory.

Copy the ircbot.example.ini to ircbot.ini in the same location and open in the text editor of your choice.

Running

From a downloaded/cloned source src/bin/ircbot.php should suffice.

Building/Extending

The build system I'm using is ant and there are several php based build tools used:

pear config-set auto_discover 1
pear install PHP_CodeSniffer
pear install PhpDocumentor
pear install channel://pear.phpmd.org/PHP_PMD
pear install channel://pear.pdepend.org/PHP_Depend
pear install channel://pear.phpunit.de/phpcpd
pear install channel://pear.phpunit.de/phploc
pear install channel://pear.phpunit.de/PHP_CodeBrowser
pear install channel://pear.phpunit.de/PHPUnit

You may not want all of those, but phpunit I would heartily recommend and if you are going to commit back, please use the PHP_CodeSniffer to validate to the coding standards.

Running ant will execute a complete unit test and coverage report and dump the output in the build directory.

If you want to see the project coverage, docs or other metrics they should be available here

Basic Operation

overlord has some basic commands that are hopefully self explanatory.

For most actions you can direct message overlord or direct a message to him in a channel.

e.g.

/msg overlord help

or in channel overlord: help for both he will return a link to this page.

Some commands he will only direct message back, e.g. asking for a list of commands:

overlord: commands
/msg overlord commands

should result in a private message consisting something like

?ampm, ?args, ?hits
addop, delop, deop, devoice, join
kick, leave, op, part, part
ping, showops, stats, uptime, version
voice, welcome, welcomeTopic

Built in commands

Commands that are not prefixed with a ? are built in commands to overlord or provided by a plugin.

channel commands

overlord: join forge
overlord: leave forge
/msg overlord join forge
/msg overlord leave forge

part can also be used and is a synonym for leave.

Channels can be referenced with or without the #prefix.

Mode commands

Should overlord be in a channel in which he is an operator, you can ask overlord to op, deop, voice and devoice you. in a channel

overlord: op
overlord: deop
overlord: voice
overlord: devoice

overlord will grant or remove op and voice privileges. However, be warned, he is fickle.

overlord: op b3cft
overlord: deop b3cft
etc...

overlord will grant or remove ops and voice from another user (b3cft)

Extensible Commands

Commands prefixed with a ? are actually scripts located on the filesystem. N.B. you do not need to direct the message to overlord for these commands, but he will understand if you do.

Overlord will execute them passing in parameters based on the requests, roughly as such:

{nick} {channel} {sender} {command} {args...}

so in #frameworks and asking overlord ?mycommand one two three will result in

mycommand overlord \#frameworks b3cft mycommand one two three 

being executed on the server.

Send the same message to overlord in a direct message will result in

mycommand overlord null b3cft mycommand one two three 

Command can be written in any language as long they are executable in a shell. Any output (currently) is echoed back to the channel or user that orginated the request.

###Example commands

• ?eagles reports who the current eagles are (also the same command updates!)
• ?ampm responds with morning or afternoon
• ?dod reports the confluence location of Frameworks Definition of Done
• ?hits looks the term up on google and reports the number of hits

I may take recommendations for new features.

Plugins

There are several plugins to extend overlord I have currently written.

• oper handles the oping and deop in channels and who is allowed to execute.
• subber will rewrite typos in channels based on people posting s/search/replace/ or ^search^replace replacements. (this is quite good fun!)
• welcomer spots newcomers to a channel and send them the topic message (customisable with the welcometopic command) also overlord welcome bob will welcome bob to the channel.