gu

Gu

Gu is a minimalistic bot makers wrapper for the irc module.

It adds two key features to the irc module module:

• regular expression handlers in the style of hubot (but without all those annoying environment variables and coffee-script..)
• hot code reloading of specified files (without the bot having to leave the server)

Usage

Create a main file, bot.js say:

var gu = require('gu')(server, "botName", ircOpts, scriptPath, files);

The first three arguments to Gu are simply passed through to the irc module. The fourth and fifth is the script path, and the files in the scriptpath that will be watched for changes (and is assumed to contain handlers exported behind a function).

Then, put a file in your scriptpath, like.js, say, and add handlers therein:

module.exports = function (gu) {
  gu.on(/^i like your (\w*)$/, function (what) {
    gu.say('i has ' + what + ' :O');
  });
};

Then fire up the bot with node bot.js, navigate to the specified server and channel (in ircOpts), and try saying botName: i like your charisma in the channel.

Changing the handler in like.js will result in different behaviour without having to restart bot.js.

A more extensive example is avaiable in the example directory.

Complete examples

The following personal bots are all built on gu:

• cleverbot-irc
• wolfram-irc
• curvefever-stats

Future

Since gu handlers are essentially transportless response functions, if your handler packages does not include the gu dependency, you can essentially release the behaviour, and let people include it using the gu transport they want. XMPP should be a easy to implement as a drop in replacement for gu (TODO).

Caveats

The script path you specify to gu should only contain the handler functions. If you point the path at your lib dir, then it may reload all the files in that directory when you change one of your handlers.

Installation

$ npm install gu --save

Running tests

Install development dependencies

$ npm install

Run the tests

$ npm test

License

MIT-Licensed. See LICENSE file for details.