IRC Python Bot: Best Way

Question

I want to build a bot that basically does the following:

Listens to the room and interacts with users and encourages them to PM the bot.
Once a user has PMed the bot engage with the client using various AI techniques.

Should I just use the IRC library or Sockets in python or do I need more of a bot framework.

What would you do?

Thanks!

Here is the code I'm currently using, however, I haven't gotten it to work.

#!/usr/bin/python 
import socket
network = 'holmes.freenet.net'
port = 6667
irc = socket.socket ( socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM )
irc.connect ( ( network, port ) )
irc.send ( 'NICK PyIRC\r\n' )
irc.send ( 'USER PyIRC PyIRC PyIRC :Python IRC\r\n' )
irc.send ( 'JOIN #pyirc\r\n' )
irc.send ( 'PRIVMSG #pyirc :Can you hear me?\r\n' )
irc.send ( 'PART #pyirc\r\n' )
irc.send ( 'QUIT\r\n' )
irc.close()

I'm close to finishing an IRC package for Python which might be able to help you out. I'll have it available here: http://ircutils.evanfosmark.com/ — Evan Fosmark, Jul 22 '09 at 07:42

score 12 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 08 '09 at 22:35

12

Use Twisted or Asynchat if you want to have a sane design. It is possible to just do it with sockets but why bother doing it from scratch?

answered Jul 08 '09 at 22:35

Unknown

45,913
27
138
182

I just checked out Twisted again and found it under the IM section. Thanks for the link. What exactly does the Asynchat help with? – Noah Clark Jul 08 '09 at 22:46

score 7 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 08 '09 at 22:29

7

If you want to have AI techniques involved, then I suggest you look at the AIML package for Python. It is the same technology that ALICE bots are done in.

answered Jul 08 '09 at 22:29

Evan Fosmark

98,895
36
105
117

1

Thanks for the heads up on the AIML package! – Noah Clark Jul 08 '09 at 22:34

score 5 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 08 '10 at 20:03

If what you want is to create the AI portion, why bother writing all the code needed for the IRC connection by yourself?

I suggest using SupyBot, and simply write your AI-code as a plugin for it. There is reasonably understandable documentation and lots of example-code to find. Also, it comes with a decent amount of plugins for all sorts of uses that might complement your AI.

score 4 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 20 '11 at 13:18

4

As I'm replying ~2 years later, I'm writing this just for Googlers :-P

Just try my 'Yet Another Useless IRC Bot' here https://github.com/julienpalard/yauib permitting you to code each feature of your bot using whatever language you want.

answered Mar 20 '11 at 13:18

Julien Palard

8,736
2
37
44

score 2 · Answer 5 · answered Jul 09 '09 at 06:13

I made a (very crappy, and for a long time being refactored) IRC bot using irclib. The documentation is next-to-nothing, but it gets rid of making you have to do all that socket connecting and such, which is stuff I really don't want to deal with. To each his own, though.

score 2 · Answer 6 · answered Jan 05 '10 at 05:40

2

Use an existing IRC library instead of implementing the protocol yourself.

answered Jan 05 '10 at 05:40

Nicolás

7,423
33
35

IRC Python Bot: Best Way

6 Answers6

Linked