NAME
Bot::BasicBot::Pluggable - extension to the simple irc bot base class allowing for pluggable modules
SYNOPSIS
# with all defaults
my $bot = Bot::BasicBot->new();
# with useful options
my $bot = Bot::BasicBot->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)
# Load base class of modules
$bot->load("Base");
# Load some useful modules
$bot->load("Infobot");
$bot->load("Google");
$bot->load("Seen");
$bot->run();DESCRIPTION
Bot::BasicBot::Pluggable started as Yet Another Infobot replacement, but now is a generalised framework for writing infobot-type bots, that lets you keep each function seperate. You can have seperate modules for factoid tracking, 'seen' status, karma, googling, etc. Included with the package are modules for:
Auth - user authentication and admin access
Loader - loads and unloads modules as bot commands
Join - joins and leaves channels
Vars - changes module variables
Infobot - handles infobot-style factoids
Karma - tracks the popularity of things
Seen - tells you when people were last seen
Blog - a chump-like blog engine
DNS - host lookup
Google - search google for things
Shout - Tracks how noisy people are.use perldoc Bot::BasicBot::Pluggable::Module::<module name> for help on their terminology.
The way this works is very simple. You create a new bot object, and tell it to load various modules. Then you run the bot. The modules get events when the bot sees things happen, and can respond to the events.
perldoc Bot::BasicBot::Pluggable::Module::Base for the details of the module API.
Main Methods
- new
-
Create a new Bot. Identical to the new method in Bot::BasicBot.
- load($module)
-
Load a module for the bot by name, from, by preference './Modules/$module.pm', but will fall back to Bot::BasicBot::Pluggable::Module::$module if this isn't available.
- reload($module)
-
Reload the module $module - equivalent to unloading it (if it's already loaded) and reloading it. Will stomp the old module's namespace - warnings are expected here.
Not toally clean - if you're experiencing odd bugs, restart the bot if possible. Works for minor bug fixes, etc.
- unload
-
Removes a module from the bot. It won't get events any more.
- reply($mess, $body)
-
Reply to a Bot::BasicBot message $mess. Will reply to an incoming message with the text '$body', in a privmsg if $mess was a privmsg, in channel if not, and prefixes if $mess was prefixed. Mostly a shortcut method.
- module($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 loaded moudues, as an array or an arrayref depending on what context it's called in.
- 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.
The chump example code in examples/ is EVIL. Very. I'll tidy it, muttley has promised me a Text::Chump or something soon. It's there more as a placeholder for something /good/, really.
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.