err - the pluggable jabber bot
err is a plugin based XMPP chatbot designed to be easily deployable, extensible and maintainable. It is written in python and it is based on jabberbot and yapsy with some minor modifications for the first one.
Brief History
At Mondial Telecom (http://www.mondialtelecom.eu), we needed a chat bot over XMPP so it can reach the non techie audience of the company. We started to write so much features that we decided to make a more modular bot framework.
Features
- Tested with hipchat and openfire but should be compatible with any XMPP/Jabber servers.
- Can be setup so a restricted list of persons have the administration rights
- Dynamic plugin architecture : the bot admin can install/uninstall/enable/disable plugins dynamically just by chatting with the bot.
- Supports MUCs (chatrooms)
- Can proxy and route one 2 one messages to MUC so it can enabler simpler XMPP notifiers to be MUC compatible (for example the jira XMPP notifier).
- Really easily extensible (see example below)
- Provides an an automatic persistance store per plugin
- an !help command that generate dynamically the documentation from the python docstrings of the commands
Installation
Dependencies
Python 2.7+ but probably not 3.0 And those python modules. The copy-paste for the lazy pip users but if you can have them from your standard distro it is better
pip install -r requirements.txt
Create a user for the bot in your XMPP server admin.
From the installation directory copy
cp config-template.py config.py
Read the inline documentation of the file and edit the values so the bot can connect to your XMPP server
Starting the daemon
For a one shot try, I would recommend to use
./err.py
so you can inspect the logs for an immediate feedback
Then at deployment time, a nohup utility script can be used
./err.sh
More details on the bot admin can be found on the wiki : https://github.com/gbin/err/wiki/admin
Interact with the Bot
- Invite the bot directly from your chat client.
- Send "!help" to it without the quotes
- it should answer by the list of available commands and a short explanation
- if you want to know more about a command you can do "!help command"
More documentation is available on the wiki : https://github.com/gbin/err/wiki
Install/uninstall a public known plugin
To get a list of public repo you can do
!repos
Then pick one that you fancy for example
!install err-pollbot
You should have instantly a new poll service you can use to vote for where to lunch with you collegues :)
You can imply uninstall a plugin by its name: !uninstall err-pollbot
Note: Please pay attention when you install a plugin, it may require more python external dependencies.
Tutorial to write a simple plugin
Try it ! It is super simple !
You can find a tutorial here : https://github.com/gbin/err/wiki/plugin-dev