Botto

A very advanced robot

Usage

1. Clone this repo

2. cd botto then npm install --no-optional

3. Edit config.js according to example.config.js in the root directory

4. Bring up a fresh postgres database with schema.sql. Seed the database with seed.sql, commenting out any modules you do not want (note: you can also !unmount them while botto is running)

5. Launch your botto with node botto.js

Design

Botto uses 2 types of listeners when responding to events: commands and observers. the _commandHandler and _observerHandler both act as routing layers to call their respective modules. The modules themselves contain the logic for whatever the module is responsible for. This allows us to easily add/remove/hot-swap modules without having to mess with the routing layer since the modules are pulled in dynamically on message events.

Both commands & observers inherit from their parent class. Child modules will do whatever work they need to, and ultimately return a respond() callback with their response. This callback will respond with the supplied value to the designated receiver as determined by the _*Handler (be it a channel, private message, etc). For an better understanding, check out the observerHandler class.

Commands

Commands are explicit commands that start with the !bang syntax and are all listed under the commands directory. Commands must follow the convention of module name == command name. In other words, if your command trigger is !foo [args], your command module must be named foo.js. Every command must extend the base command class.

Note: By convention, all commands must declare a call function like so:

call(bot, opts, respond) {
 // some code
}

Where opts is the options hash created in the handler and respond is a callback to be fired with the string you wish the bot to echo to the receiver. The bot instance itself is passed for use in admin commands and ignored otherwise. This call function should be used to parse the incoming message and delegate to the appropriate helper functions.

Admin Commands

Admin commands act as normal !bang prefixed commands, but only respond to users who are declared as global or channel-specific admins in config.js.

Observers

Observers are triggered when an observable event happens (a keyword or nickname is mentioned, for example). Each observer instance must declare a matching RegEx in its constructor which it will trigger upon matching incoming message events. Each observer must extend the base observer class. Like commands, each observer must also declare a call function:

call(opts, respond) {
 // some code
}

If you need an observer to fire on every message event, for example building a cache of all recent messages, you should use a regex that captures any message sent: /.*/

DB Schema

Enter psql prompt with psql -d botto.

Import the schema (from psql) with \i db/schema.sql. Old tables will be skipped.