irc-bot.rs

A library for writing [Internet Relay Chat (IRC) bots] in the programming language [Rust], additionally providing a pre-configured bot for immediate use.

What documentation there is should be available on Docs.rs.

Quick-start

To use this library without writing one's own bot with it, run the provided program src/bin/egbot.rs:

$ # For most people:
$ cargo run
$ # For NixOS users:
$ make run

The name egbot is derived from ["e.g."], which means "for example", and is also a pun on the name of [Eggdrop], an old IRC bot.

The bot can be configured by editing the [YAML] file config.yaml. One should at least put one's IRC nick in the admins field — e.g., if one's nick is ["Ferris"]:

admins:
  - nick: Ferris

Configuration fields currently supported are as follows (with values given for example only):

# A string to be used as the bot's IRC nickname. This field is required.
nickname: egbot

# A string to be used as the bot's IRC username (which has little effect
# in most cases). Defaults to the nickname.
username: egbot

# A string to be used as the bot's IRC "realname" or "GECOS string", which
# has still less effect and is often used to display information about a
# bot's software. Defaults to displaying information about the bot's
# software.
realname: 'Built with `irc-bot.rs`.'

# A list of servers to which the bot should connect on start-up.
# Currently, only the first server will be used, and the bot will crash if
# no servers are listed; both of these issues should be fixed at some
# future point.
servers:
  - host: irc.mozilla.org
    port: 6667 # Sadly, TLS connections are not yet implemented.

# A list of IRC users who will be authorized to direct the bot to run
# certain priviledged commands. For each listed user, the fields `nick`,
# `user`, and `host` may be specified; for each of which that is
# specified, a user will need to have a matching nickname, username, or
# hostname (respectively) to be authorized. All the specified fields must
# match for a user to be authorized.
admins:
  # To be authorized as an administrator of the bot, this user will need
  # to have the nickname "Ferris", the username "~crab", and the hostname
  # "rustacean.net":
  - nick: Ferris
    user: '~crab'
    host: rustacean.net
  # To be authorized as an administrator of the bot, this user will only
  # need have the nickname "c74d":
  - nick: c74d

There is currently no way to specify in the configuration file which channels the bot should join (this should be fixed), but one can send commands such as join #botters-test to the bot in one-to-one messaging (more commonly called "query").

Building

For most users, it should suffice simply to use [Cargo]:

$ cargo build

Users of the Linux distribution [NixOS] may prefer to use the provided [Makefile], which wraps the tool nix-shell:

$ make build