This is intended to get your feet wet with Hubot - a chatbot framework.
This repository has been preconfigured for a specific IRC-Channel - good old Internet Relay Chat. In case you don't have an IRC program installed, you can enter the chat room with your web browser:
If you do have an IRC client, connect it to:
Server: irc.wolki.de
Channel: #imdrocks
If you know and have Git: git clone https://github.com/ccoenen/imd-chatbot.git
If you don't have git: go to https://github.com/ccoenen/imd-chatbot and find the huge green "Clone or download" button. Download a zip and then unzip it somewhere.
Either way, change into the newly created directory in your terminal
run npm install --no-optional to install the required packages. The
--no-optional is somewhat odd, but there appears to be a package that can't
be built on many computers. Luckily, it's optional.
The only required configuration is naming your bot! The name is part of the
start scripts bin/hubot (Mac OS/Linux) or bin/hubot.cmd (Windows). Open
the one for your platform and replace berndibernd with a nice suitable name.
In case you have trouble coming up with a name, try this baby name generator.
You can start your chatbot locally by running this:
# on mac os / linux
bin/hubot
# on Windows
bin\hubot.cmd
You'll see some start up output and a prompt:
[Sat Feb 28 2015 12:38:27 GMT+0000 (GMT)] INFO Using default redis on localhost:6379
your-chosen-name>
Then you can interact with your bot by typing <your-chosen-name> help in your terminal.
berndibernd> berndibernd help
berndibernd animate me <query> - The same thing as `image me`, except adds [snip]
berndibernd help - Displays all of the help commands that berndibernd knows about.
...
Now stop the bot with Ctrl+C on your keyboard.
So far, all of this is just happening on your own machine. This mode is very convenient for debugging, but the point is to have an actual chat bot for many people, so we need to get it to connect to the actual server!
# on mac os / linux
bin/hubot -a irc
# on Windows
bin\hubot.cmd -a irc
Now head over to your chat client (see "Where do I find my bot" at the top of this document), and try some commands!
There's an example file in scripts/example-plain.js - consisting of a few
blocks of code, which have been commented out. Try a few of those examples, they
are explained in more detail in the Hubot Scripting Guide.
Please be aware that the website is listing stuff in CoffeeScript format! That's
why they look funny.
You need to restart your hubot when you make changes to your code!
Toss a file in scripts/, Hubot will automatically load it. Use this as your
basic skeleton:
module.exports = function (robot) {
// your code goes here.
};you can have as many scripts as you want.
Remember: your scripts are just regular JavaScript files, you can use anything you want in there! Try moment.js!
take a look at existing hubot scripts. Find one you like and try to follow the instruction in their readme to get it up and running!
The usual steps to add another script are:
npm install --save <name-of-new-script>- adding the name to
external-scripts.json
Let's try that with hubot-encourage:
npm install --save hubot-encourage- adding the name to
external-scripts.json
Adapters are the interface to the service you want your hubot to run on, such as Campfire or IRC. There are a number of third party adapters that the community have contributed. Check Hubot Adapters for the available ones.
As many of you are running on slack, anyway, try hubot-slack. Documentation is sketchy, basically they tell you to start over. In case you need assistance, let me know!
Once you've added the dependency with npm install --save to install it you
can then run hubot with the adapter.
# mac os / Linux
bin/hubot -a <adapter>
# windows
bin\hubot.cmd -a <adapter>
Where <adapter> is the name of your adapter without the hubot- prefix.
In case you don't like these modifications, here's documentation on how to get started with hubot