I have tidied up my initial experimentations into a class named ‘Bot’ and added the ability to define ‘commands’ on the fly. Although a long way from being a useful bot, an amusing example of what python can do quickly.

The code follows:

#!/usr/bin/env python

import sys,socket,string,time

class Bot:
	responses = {
		'WHOAREYOU': 'I am the bot!',
		'HELLO': 'Hello, how are you?'
	}
	def __init__(self, host, port, nick, ident):
		self.host = host
		self.port = port
		self.nick = nick
		self.ident = ident
		self.socket = socket.socket()
	def connect(self):
		self.socket.connect((self.host, self.port))
		time.sleep(0.2)
		self.socket.send("NICK %s\r\n" % self.nick)
		time.sleep(0.2)
		self.socket.send("USER %s %s bla :%s\r\n" % (
		self.ident, self.host,
		"the bot called %s" % self.nick
		))
	def disconnect(self):
		print "Quitting..."
		self.socket.send ("QUIT\r\n")
	def join(self, channel):
		print "==> Joining %s" % channel
		self.socket.send("JOIN %s\r\n" % channel)
	def leave(self, channel, message = 'Bye Bye'):
		self.socket.send("PART %s :%s\r\n" % (channel, message))
	def pong(self, data):
		self.socket.send("PONG %s\r\n" % data)
	def handleMessage(self, channel, nick, message):
		print "%s on %s: %s" % (nick, channel, message)
		if(message[0] == '!'):
			print "command=>"
			dat = message.split()
			self.handleCommand(channel, nick, dat[0], dat[1:])
	def addResponse(self, command, response):
		self.responses[command] = ' '.join(response)
	def handleCommand(self, channel, nick, command, arguments):
		command = command[1:]
		if command == 'BYE':
			self.disconnect()
			exit()
		elif command == 'JOIN':
			self.join(arguments[0])
		elif command == 'LEAVE':
			self.leave(channel)
		elif command == 'IDENTIFY':
			self.reply('NickServ', '', "IDENTIFY %s" % arguments[0])
		elif command == 'DEFINE':
			self.addResponse(arguments[0], arguments[1:])
		elif command in self.responses:
			self.reply(channel, nick, self.responses[command])
	def reply(self, channel, nick, message):
		self.socket.send("PRIVMSG %s %s: %s\r\n" % (channel, nick, message))
	def flush(self):
		print self.socket.recv(4096)
	def mainloop(self):
		readbuffer = ''
		while 1:
			data = self.socket.recv(1024)
			if data:
				print data
			readbuffer=readbuffer+data
			temp=string.split(readbuffer, "\n")
			readbuffer=temp.pop()
			for line in temp:
				line = line.rstrip()
				line = line.split()
				#handle possibilities
				print "line ##'%s'##" % line
				if line[0] == "PING":
					self.pong(line[1])
				elif line[1] == "PRIVMSG":
					channel = line[2]
					nick = line[0].split('!')[0]
					message = ' '.join(line[3:])[1:]
					self.handleMessage(channel, nick, message)

if __name__ == '__main__':
	bot = Bot('irc.freenode.net', 6667, 'BavBot', 'bavbot')
	try:
		bot.connect()
		bot.flush()
		time.sleep(0.2)
		#bot.join('##bavardage')
		bot.mainloop()
	except:
		print "interrupt"
		print sys.exc_info()[0]
		bot.disconnect()
		raise

Commands:

• !IDENTIFY password – identifies the nickname
• !JOIN channel – joins the specified channel
• !LEAVE channel – leaves the specified channel
• !QUIT – disconnects from the IRC server
• !DEFINE command response – sets up a response to the specified command (give the command without the preceding ‘!’)