NAME

Bot::BasicBot::Pluggable - extension to the simple irc bot base class allowing for pluggable modules

SYNOPSIS

Creating the bot module

# with all defaults
my $bot = Bot::BasicBot->new();

# with useful options
my $bot = Bot::BasicBot::Pluggable->new( channels => ["#bottest"],

                    server => "irc.example.com",
                    port   => "6667",

                    nick     => "pluggabot",
                    altnicks => ["pbot", "pluggable"],
                    username => "bot",
                    name     => "Yet Another Pluggable Bot",

                    ignore_list => [qw(hitherto blech muttley)],

              );

(You can pass any option that's valid for Bot::BasicBot)

Running the bot (simple)

There's a shell script installed to run the bot.

$ bot-basicbot-pluggable.pl --nick MyBot --server irc.perl.org

Then connect to the IRC server, /query the bot, and set a password. See Bot::BasicBot::Pluggable::Module::Auth for details.

Running the bot (advanced)

There are two useful ways you can use a Pluggable bot. The simple way and the flexible way. The simple way is:

# Load some useful modules
my $infobot_module = $bot->load("Infobot");
my $google_module = $bot->load("Google");
my $seen_module = $bot->load("Seen");

# Set the google key (see http://www.google.com/apis/)
$google_module->set("google_key", "some google key");

$bot->run();

This lets you run a bot with a few modules, but not change those modules during the run of the bot. The complex way is as follows:

# Load the loader module
$bot->load('Loader');

# run the bot
$bot->run();

This is simpler but needs setup once the bot is joined to a server. the Loader module lets you talk to the bot in-channel and tell it to load and unload other modules. The first one you'll want to load is the 'Auth' module, so that other people can't load and unload modules without permission. Then you need to log in as an admin and change your password.

(in a query)
!load Auth
!auth admin julia
!password julia new_password
!auth admin new_password

Once you've done this, your bot is safe against other IRC users. Now you can tell it to load and unload other modules any time:

!load Seen
!load Google
!load Join

The join module lets you tell the bot to join and leave channels:

!join #mychannel
!leave #someotherchannel

The perldoc pages for the various modules will list other commands.

DESCRIPTION

Bot::BasicBot::Pluggable started as Yet Another Infobot replacement, but now is a generalised framework for writing infobot-type bots, that lets you keep each function seperate. You can have seperate modules for factoid tracking, 'seen' status, karma, googling, etc. Included with the package are modules for:

Auth - user authentication and admin access
Loader - loads and unloads modules as bot commands
Join - joins and leaves channels
Vars - changes module variables
Infobot - handles infobot-style factoids
Karma - tracks the popularity of things
Seen - tells you when people were last seen
DNS - host lookup
Google - search google for things
Title - Gets the title of pages mentioned in channel

use perldoc Bot::BasicBot::Pluggable::Module::<module name> for help on their terminology.

The way this works is very simple. You create a new bot object, and tell it to load various modules. Then you run the bot. The modules get events when the bot sees things happen, and can respond to the events.

perldoc Bot::BasicBot::Pluggable::Module::Base for the details of the module API.

Main Methods

new

Create a new Bot. Identical to the new method in Bot::BasicBot.

load($module)

Load a module for the bot by name, from ./modules/Modulename.pm if that file exists, and falling back to the system package Bot::BasicBot::Pluggable::Module::$module if not.

reload($module)

Reload the module $module - equivalent to unloading it (if it's already loaded) and reloading it. Will stomp the old module's namespace - warnings are expected here.

Not toally clean - if you're experiencing odd bugs, restart the bot if possible. Works for minor bug fixes, etc.

unload

Removes a module from the bot. It won't get events any more.

module($module)

returns the handler object for the loaded module '$module'. used, eg, to get the 'Auth' hander to check if a given user is authenticated.

modules

returns a list of the names of all loaded modules, as an array.

add_handler(handler object, name of handler)

adds a handler object with the given name to the queue of modules. There is no order specified internally, adding a module earlier does not guarantee it gets called first. Names must be unique.

remove_handler

remove a handler with the given name.

store

returns the object store associated with the bot. See Bot::BasicBot::Pluggable::Store.

dispatch(method name, params)

call the named method on every loaded module, if the module has a method with that name.

said

called as a subclass of Bot::BasicBot,

run

runs the bot. The POE core gets control as of this point, you're unlikely to get control back.

AUTHOR

Tom Insam <tom@jerakeen.org>

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

CREDITS

Bot::BasicBot was written initially by Mark Fowler, and worked on heavily by Simon Kent, who was kind enough to apply some patches I needed for Pluggable.

Eventually.

Oh, yeah, and I stole huge chunks of docs from the Bot::BasicBot source, too.

Various people helped with modules. Convert was almost ported from the infobot code by blech. But not quite. Thanks for trying.. blech has also put a lot of effort into the chump.cgi/chump.tem in the examples/ folder, including some /inspired/ calendar evilness.

And thanks to the rest of #2lmc, who were my unwilling guinea pigs during development. And who kept suggesting totally stupid ideas for modules that I then felt compelled to go implement. Shout.pm owes it's existence to #2lmc.

I spent a lot of time in the mozbot code, and that has influenced my ideas for Pluggable. Mostly to get round its awfulness.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

Bot::BasicBot::Pluggable is based on POE, and really needs the latest version. Because POE is like that sometimes.

You also need POE::Component::IRC. Oh, and Bot::BasicBot.

Some of the modules will need more modules. eg, Google.pm needs Net::Google. See the module docs for more details.

BUGS

During the make, make test make install process, POE will moan about its kernel not being run. This is a Bot::BasicBot problem, apparently.

reloading a module causes warnings as the old module gets it's namespace stomped. Not a lot you can do about that.

All modules need to be in the Bot::Pluggable::Module:: namespace. Well, that's not really a bug.

More other things than I can shake a stick at.

SEE ALSO

POE

POE::Component::IRC

Bot::BasicBot

Possibly Infobot, at http://www.infobot.org, and Mozbot, somewhere in mozilla.org.

cpanm Bot::BasicBot::Pluggable

perl -MCPAN -e shell
install Bot::BasicBot::Pluggable