robinette

robinette is a simple IRC bot composed of two main components, client and server.

The Client

Client uses the twisted library. It's a thin client, which just receives and sends messages from and to the IRC server. Upon receiving an IRC message, it sends a request to the backend, and sends it's response back to IRC (if any).

The Server (backend)

Server is an asynchronous XML-RPC service which does all the work. It processes the IRC message sent from the client and based on it's context creates a response, which is sent back to the client. It also logs all the events and messages to a MongoDB database.

This client/server architecture allows us to add new features/commands to the bot without having to restart and disconnect the client from the IRC server, because all new features just need to be added to the server, and the client can then use them instantialy.

Implemented functionality (available commands)

• Seen - !seen <nick> (returns the last time nick was seen)

• Backlog - !backlog

  Backlog returns a list of messages with timestamps less than the last user login time. This allows to user to see messages that were sent to the channel when he was logged out. Backlog returns the last 10 messages, if the user needs older messages, he can issue another !backlog command, fetching another 10 messages from the buffer. The buffer duration is set to 10 minutes, then it gets reset, and another !backlog command returns the last 10 messages again.

• Stock quotes - !quote <symbol> (returns the realtime bid and ask stock prices for symbol)

• Youtube - parses a youtube link, if it appears in the message, and sends a message with the title of the video

• Chat - a simple markov chain chatbot responds to messages addressed to the bot