Boter is a simple library to build your own smooth IRC bot using node.js. It allows you to easily respond to highlights, mentions and PMs.

Boter is built on top of the excellent node-irc and written in CoffeeScript. The name (boter) is obviously derived from the word "bot", and is Dutch for "butter".

Installation

Installation is as simple as:

$ npm install boter

If you want to hack on Boter or check if it works correctly on your system you can clone the repository or copy the files to your path of choice, and then:

$ cd path/to/boter/
$ npm install

You can then run the tests by simple calling:

$ make test

Usage

You can create a Boter bot like your would create a node_irc client:

var boter = require('../path/to/boter/');

var opts = {
    channels: [#bar]
};
var bot = new boter.Boter('irc.server.foo', 'MyBoter', opts);

In addition to the nickname, you can give the bot a few aliasses to which it will respond:

var opts = {
    channels: [#bar],
    aliasses: ['BoterBot', 'Boter']
}
var bot = new boter.Boter('irc.server.foo', 'MyBoter', opts);

To actually listen to messages, Boter emits events you can listen to:

var goodMorning = function(message) {
    if (/^good morning/.test(message.text))
        message.reply("Good morning to you, too, "+message.from+"!");
}
bot.on('highlight', goodMorning);
bot.on('mention', goodMorning);

// <Someone>: BoterBot: Good morning!
// <MyBoter>: Good morning to you, too, Someone!

// <Person>: good morning, boter.
// <MyBoter>: Good morning to you, too, Person!

Note that the 'BoterBot: ' prefix is automatically trimmed from the message, and message.text lower cased. The original text (also trimmed, but not decapitalized) can be found in message.original.

BoterBot emits three kinds of events:

• It emits 'pm' when a PM (or "query") is received;
• It emits 'highlight' when the Bot is specifically adressed, e.g. "BoterBot: hey, you!";
• It emits 'mention' when the bot is mentioned elsewhere in the message. e.g. "Ceterum censeo boterbot delendam est.".

All of these events pass a Message object to the callback, as shown above. Mentions and highlights are triggered on the bot's nick or any of its aliasses, which are matched case insensitively.

More events will follow in a future version (as well as forwarding of all other node-irc events).

Testing

To run the test:

$ cd path/to/boter/
$ make test

In addition, you can:

• use make build to build the CoffeeScript source to lib/;
• use make monitor to monitor and run the test when they change, or;
• use make coverage to generate a code coverage report (which is saved to lib-cov/report.html).

Alternatively, you can use npm [command] instead of make [command] (they're equivalent).

Note: jscoverage is needed to generate a coverage report.

For testing, Boter uses Mocha and should.js. In addition, Mockery is used to test in isolation (with a mock of node_irc).

License

This software is licensed under the Simplified BSD License (see LICENSE).