IRC(3) User Contributed Perl Documentation IRC(3)NAMENet::IRC - DEAD SINCE 2004 Perl interface to the Internet Relay Chat
protocol
USE THESE INSTEAD
This module has been abandoned and is no longer developed. This release
serves only to warn current and future users about this and to direct
them to supported and actively-developed libraries for connecting Perl
to IRC. Most new users will want to use Bot::BasicBot, whereas more
advanced users will appreciate the flexibility offered by
POE::Component::IRC. We understand that porting code to a new framework
can be difficult. Please stop by #perl on irc.freenode.net and we'll be
happy to help you out with bringing your bots into the modern era.
SYNOPSIS
use Net::IRC;
$irc = new Net::IRC;
$conn = $irc->newconn(Nick => 'some_nick',
Server => 'some.irc.server.com',
Port => 6667,
Ircname => 'Some witty comment.');
$irc->start;
DESCRIPTION
This module has been abandoned and deprecated since 2004. The original
authors have moved onto POE::Component::IRC and more modern techniques.
This distribution is not maintained and only uploaded to present
successively louder "don't use this" warnings to those unaware.
Welcome to Net::IRC, a work in progress. First intended to be a quick
tool for writing an IRC script in Perl, Net::IRC has grown into a
comprehensive Perl implementation of the IRC protocol (RFC 1459),
developed by several members of the EFnet IRC channel #perl, and
maintained in channel #net-irc.
There are 4 component modules which make up Net::IRC:
· Net::IRC
The wrapper for everything else, containing methods to generate
Connection objects (see below) and a connection manager which does
an event loop on all available filehandles. Sockets or files which
are readable (or writable, or whatever you want it to select() for)
get passed to user-supplied handler subroutines in other packages
or in user code.
· Net::IRC::Connection
The big time sink on this project. Each Connection instance is a
single connection to an IRC server. The module itself contains
methods for every single IRC command available to users (Net::IRC
isn't designed for writing servers, for obvious reasons), methods
to set, retrieve, and call handler functions which the user can set
(more on this later), and too many cute comments. Hey, what can I
say, we were bored.
· Net::IRC::Event
Kind of a struct-like object for storing info about things that the
IRC server tells you (server responses, channel talk, joins and
parts, et cetera). It records who initiated the event, who it
affects, the event type, and any other arguments provided for that
event. Incidentally, the only argument passed to a handler
function.
· Net::IRC::DCC
The analogous object to Connection.pm for connecting, sending and
retrieving with the DCC protocol. Instances of DCC.pm are invoked
from "Connection->new_{send,get,chat}" in the same way that
"IRC->newconn" invokes "Connection->new". This will make more sense
later, we promise.
The central concept that Net::IRC is built around is that of handlers
(or hooks, or callbacks, or whatever the heck you feel like calling
them). We tried to make it a completely event-driven model, a la Tk --
for every conceivable type of event that your client might see on IRC,
you can give your program a custom subroutine to call. But wait,
there's more! There are 3 levels of handler precedence:
· Default handlers
Considering that they're hardwired into Net::IRC, these won't do
much more than the bare minimum needed to keep the client listening
on the server, with an option to print (nicely formatted, of
course) what it hears to whatever filehandles you specify (STDOUT
by default). These get called only when the user hasn't defined any
of his own handlers for this event.
· User-definable global handlers
The user can set up his own subroutines to replace the default
actions for every IRC connection managed by your program. These
only get invoked if the user hasn't set up a per-connection handler
for the same event.
· User-definable per-connection handlers
Simple: this tells a single connection what to do if it gets an
event of this type. Supersedes global handlers if any are defined
for this event.
And even better, you can choose to call your custom handlers before or
after the default handlers instead of replacing them, if you wish. In
short, it's not perfect, but it's about as good as you can get and
still be documentable, given the sometimes horrendous complexity of the
IRC protocol.
GETTING STARTED
Initialization
To start a Net::IRC script, you need two things: a Net::IRC object, and
a Net::IRC::Connection object. The Connection object does the dirty
work of connecting to the server; the IRC object handles the input and
output for it. To that end, say something like this:
use Net::IRC;
$irc = new Net::IRC;
$conn = $irc->newconn(Nick => 'some_nick',
Server => 'some.irc.server.com');
...or something similar. Acceptable parameters to newconn() are:
· Nick
The nickname you'll be known by on IRC, often limited to a maximum
of 9 letters. Acceptable characters for a nickname are
"[\w{}[]\`^|-]". If you don't specify a nick, it defaults to your
username.
· Server
The IRC server to connect to. There are dozens of them across
several widely-used IRC networks, but the oldest and most popular
is EFNet (Eris Free Net), home to #perl. See
http://www.irchelp.org/ for lists of popular servers, or ask a
friend.
· Port
The port to connect to this server on. By custom, the default is
6667.
· Username
On systems not running identd, you can set the username for your
user@host to anything you wish. Note that some IRC servers won't
allow connections from clients which don't run identd.
· Ircname
A short (maybe 60 or so chars) piece of text, originally intended
to display your real name, which people often use for pithy quotes
and URLs. Defaults to the contents of your GECOS field.
· Password
If the IRC server you're trying to write a bot for is password-
protected, no problem. Just say ""Password =" 'foo'>" and you're
set.
· SSL
If you wish to connect to an irc server which is using SSL, set
this to a true value. Ie: ""SSL =" 1>".
Handlers
Once that's over and done with, you need to set up some handlers if you
want your bot to do anything more than sit on a connection and waste
resources. Handlers are references to subroutines which get called
when a specific event occurs. Here's a sample handler sub:
# What to do when the bot successfully connects.
sub on_connect {
my $self = shift;
print "Joining #IRC.pm...";
$self->join("#IRC.pm");
$self->privmsg("#IRC.pm", "Hi there.");
}
The arguments to a handler function are always the same:
$_[0]:
The Connection object that's calling it.
$_[1]:
An Event object (see below) that describes what the handler is
responding to.
Got it? If not, see the examples in the irctest script that came with
this distribution. Anyhow, once you've defined your handler
subroutines, you need to add them to the list of handlers as either a
global handler (affects all Connection objects) or a local handler
(affects only a single Connection). To do so, say something along these
lines:
$self->add_global_handler('376', \&on_connect); # global
$self->add_handler('msg', \&on_msg); # local
376, incidentally, is the server number for "end of MOTD", which is an
event that the server sends to you after you're connected. See Event.pm
for a list of all possible numeric codes. The 'msg' event gets called
whenever someone else on IRC sends your client a private message. For a
big list of possible events, see the Event List section in the
documentation for Net::IRC::Event.
Getting Connected
When you've set up all your handlers, the following command will put
your program in an infinite loop, grabbing input from all open
connections and passing it off to the proper handlers:
$irc->start;
Note that new connections can be added and old ones dropped from within
your handlers even after you call this. Just don't expect any code
below the call to "start()" to ever get executed.
If you're tying Net::IRC into another event-based module, such as
perl/Tk, there's a nifty "do_one_loop()" method provided for your
convenience. Calling "$irc->do_one_loop()" runs through the IRC.pm
event loop once, hands all ready filehandles over to the appropriate
handler subs, then returns control to your program.
METHOD DESCRIPTIONS
This section contains only the methods in IRC.pm itself. Lists of the
methods in Net::IRC::Connection, Net::IRC::Event, or Net::IRC::DCC are
in their respective modules' documentation; just "perldoc
Net::IRC::Connection" (or Event or DCC or whatever) to read them.
Functions take no arguments unless otherwise specified in their
description.
By the way, expect Net::IRC to use AutoLoader sometime in the future,
once it becomes a little more stable.
· addconn()
Adds the specified object's socket to the select loop in
"do_one_loop()". This is mostly for the use of Connection and DCC
objects (and for pre-0.5 compatibility)... for most (read: all)
purposes, you can just use "addfh()", described below.
Takes at least 1 arg:
0. An object whose socket needs to be added to the select loop
1. Optional: A string consisting of one or more of the letters r,
w, and e. Passed directly to "addfh()"... see the description
below for more info.
· addfh()
This sub takes a user's socket or filehandle and a sub to handle it
with and merges it into "do_one_loop()"'s list of select()able
filehandles. This makes integration with other event-based systems
(Tk, for instance) a good deal easier than in previous releases.
Takes at least 2 args:
0. A socket or filehandle to monitor
1. A reference to a subroutine. When "select()" determines that
the filehandle is ready, it passes the filehandle to this
(presumably user-supplied) sub, where you can read from it,
write to it, etc. as your script sees fit.
2. Optional: A string containing any combination of the letters r,
w or e (standing for read, write, and error, respectively)
which determines what conditions you're expecting on that
filehandle. For example, this line select()s $fh (a filehandle,
of course) for both reading and writing:
$irc->addfh( $fh, \&callback, "rw" );
· do_one_loop()
"select()"s on all open filehandles and passes any ready ones to
the appropriate handler subroutines. Also responsible for executing
scheduled events from "Net::IRC::Connection->schedule()" on time.
· new()
A fairly vanilla constructor which creates and returns a new
Net::IRC object.
· newconn()
Creates and returns a new Connection object. All arguments are
passed straight to "Net::IRC::Connection->new()"; examples of
common arguments can be found in the Synopsis or Getting Started
sections.
· removeconn()
Removes the specified object's socket from "do_one_loop()"'s list
of select()able filehandles. This is mostly for the use of
Connection and DCC objects (and for pre-0.5 compatibility)... for
most (read: all) purposes, you can just use "removefh()", described
below.
Takes 1 arg:
0. An object whose socket or filehandle needs to be removed from
the select loop
· removefh()
This method removes a given filehandle from "do_one_loop()"'s list
of selectable filehandles.
Takes 1 arg:
0. A socket or filehandle to remove
· start()
Starts an infinite event loop which repeatedly calls
"do_one_loop()" to read new events from all open connections and
pass them off to any applicable handlers.
· timeout()
Sets or returns the current "select()" timeout for the main event
loop, in seconds (fractional amounts allowed). See the
documentation for the "select()" function for more info.
Takes 1 optional arg:
0. Optional: A new value for the "select()" timeout for this IRC
object.
· flush_output_queue()
Flushes any waiting messages in the output queue if pacing is
enabled. This method will not return until the output queue is
empty.
AUTHORS
· Conceived and initially developed by Greg Bacon <gbacon@adtran.com>
and Dennis Taylor <dennis@funkplanet.com>.
· Ideas and large amounts of code donated by Nat "King" Torkington
<gnat@frii.com>.
· Currently being hacked on, hacked up, and worked over by the
members of the Net::IRC developers mailing list. For details, see
http://www.execpc.com/~corbeau/irc/list.html .
URL
Up-to-date source and information about the Net::IRC project can be
found at http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/net-irc/ .
SEE ALSO
· perl(1).
· RFC 1459: The Internet Relay Chat Protocol
· http://www.irchelp.org/, home of fine IRC resources.
POD ERRORS
Hey! The above document had some coding errors, which are explained
below:
Around line 712:
You forgot a '=back' before '=head1'
perl v5.14.0 2009-12-27 IRC(3)
