/dixieflatline

Primary LanguageGo

IRC bot to save the channel history

Rationale

IRCv3 now support the HISTORY command, but not all clients can use it, hence I’ve written this simple bot to do the job.

Start the bot

$ ./main -s ip_or_domani -p port -pass password -u username -n nickname -j ch_1,ch_2,ch_3,....,ch_n

Parameters:

  • -s The irc server ip or domain name, i.e. -s irc.libera.chat
  • -p The port to connect to -p 6697
  • -pass The password to use during connection -pass p455w04d
  • -u The username for the bot, -u McCoy Pauley
  • -n The nickname for the bot, -n dixieflatline
  • -j The channels to join after the connection, -j emacs,irc,cyberpunk

Note

Once the bot is started there is no way (for now) to let him join a channel, so if you want to save the history make sure to pass something to the -j param.

Commands

Once the bot has joined a channel it will save all message that it receives, for a maximum of 100 messages.

!ignore command

A message prefixed with !ignore will not be saved into the history

!history command

A message prefixed with !history will start a new private chat between the sender and the bot. In the private chat the bot will send all the previous stored message from the channel in which the user sended the command.

!calc command

A basic lisp calculator, it only supports +, -, *, / on double (aka float64) for now.

Stuff to do [3/5]

  • [X] Add sqlite database to store the messages. For now the message are stored in a map, there are all kind of problem, from losing the data if the bot is stopped to thread and data race since the map is not guarded by a mutex.
  • [X] Add parameter to the !history command, like !history -l 10 to get only the last 10 messages.
  • [ ] Add command to list all the commands.
  • [X] Add shortname for the commands, i.e. !h -> !history and !i -> !ignore.
  • [ ] Add more paramters to configure the bot, i.e. param to manage the tls config etcetera.
  • [ ] General refactor, some parts are not clearly separated:
    • triggers commands
    • mutually exclusive command

Name origin

IRC is the most cyberpunk thing that I’ve used in a while. Furthermore, the first iterations of the bot lose all the data on restart, this reminded me of the character of Dixie Flatline in Neuromancer of W.Gibbson, hence the name. Happy hacking.