bot/README.md

bot

This program is an IRC bot written in golang. Its development started as a clone of autimaat, aka Jeeves. Changes since cloning:

• removed code not in use
• fixed weather
• fixed youtube titles
• extended reminder plugin
• improved help command

Install

$ go get notabug.org/mouz/bot

First use

Start with creating a new profile directory and configuration file:

$ bot -new /path/to/profile

Edit the newly created configuration file to your liking:

$ nano /path/to/profile/profile.cfg

Relaunch the bot to use the new profile:

$ bot /path/to/profile

In order to have the bot automatically re-launch after shutdown, an external supervisor like systemd is required. The bot will create a PID file at /path/to/profile/app.pid, in case the supervisor requires it.

The bot will fork itself once, after it has been launched. This is done to play nice with things like systemd. Manually forking the bot can be done through the command:

$ kill -s USR1 `pidof bot`

This tells the bot to fork itself, while passing along any existing connections. The old process then shuts itself down. This mechanism allows the bot to be binary-patched, without downtime.

Weather plugins

The owm plugin provides bindings for a weather related API. The service requires registration of an account in order to get the needed API key: https://home.openweathermap.org/users/sign_up. The key should be put in weather.cfg. Furthermore, the knmi plugin needs an URL to the KNMI FTP site. This URL is also read from weather.cfg.

Thus an example weather.cfg could be:

{
  "OwmAPIKey": "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx",
  "ForecastURL": "ftp://ftp.knmi.nl/path/to/forecast.xml"
}

URL plugin

The url plugin uses the YouTube Data API v3 to fetch playback durations for videos being linked in a channel. This API requires the registration of a Google Developer API key at: https://console.developers.google.com/apis

The API key you receive should be assigned to the YoutubeApiKey field in the bot profile.

The key should put in a separate url.cfg file, with the following contents:

{
  "YoutubeApiKey": "xxxxx"
}

Versioning

The bot version is made up of 3 numbers:

• Major version: This number only changes if the bot itself changes in a way that makes it incompatible with previous versions. Changes to the format of configuration files increment this number. Changes to the way user commands are implemented do not.
• Minor version: This number changes whenever functionality changes without breaking backward compatibility. For example user commands are added/removed.
• Revision: This is the unix timestamp of the last commit. This number changes whenever any kind of change occurs in any of the code. Including small bug fixes. This number is updated through a go build flag in the included Makefile.

String translations

The output of the bot to IRC channels/users is done in a specific language. Translations for all used strings can be found in the various strings.go files, included in all plugins, as well as the cmd package. Basically, you should find . -name strings.go to get them all. Then edit them as needed.

License

Unless otherwise noted, the contents of this project are subject to a 1-clause BSD license. Its contents can be found in the enclosed LICENSE file.

SSL connections

The bot is not SSL aware. SSL connections can be created with the help of the stunnel tool. Configure stunnel to connect to the SSL port of the IRC server. Let it serve on some local port. Then configure the bot to connect to the local port. On my debian server this is a working /etc/stunnel/stunnel.conf:

setuid = stunnel4
setgid = stunnel4
pid = /var/run/stunnel4/stunnel.pid
output = /var/log/stunnel4/stunnel.log

[sirc]
client = yes
accept = 127.0.0.1:6667
connect = ssl.ircserver.net:6697