Jerk

A fun little IRC bot library for node.js. Ridiculously simple to set-up and get going!

OHMYGOD

Seriously, it's stupidly simple.

Your First Bot

Firstly, we're gonna have to clone us some Jerk. So let's do that:

git clone git://github.com/gf3/Jerk.git && cd Jerk && git submodule init && git submodule update

Hoo haa, now that we're locked and loaded, let's write a goddamn bot! We need to include Jerk:

process.mixin(GLOBAL, require("../path/to/Jerk/lib/jerk"));

Now you'll need some options. Jerk takes the exact same options object as the IRC-js library. Let's just go ahead and supply some basic info:

var options = {
  server: "irc.freenode.net",
  nick: "YourBot9001",
  channels: ["#your-channel"]
};

Hah, now you're going to cry once you see how easy this is:

jerk(function(j) {

  j.watch_for("soup", function(message) {
    message.say(message.user + ": soup is good food!");
  });

  j.watch_for(/^(.+) are silly$/, function(message) {
    message.say(message.user + ": " + message.match_data[1] + " are NOT SILLY. Don't joke!");
  });

}).connect(options);

Really. That's it.

The jerk object (j) has only one method: watch_for. Which takes two arguments, the first can be either a string or a regex to match messages against. The second argument is your hollaback function for when a match is found. The hollaback receives only one argument, the message object. It looks like this:

{
  user: String,
  channel: String,
  match_data: Array,
  say: Function
}

I think everything there is pretty self-explanatory, no? One thing I will tell you though, is the say method is smart enough to reply to the context that the message was received, so you don't need to pass it any extra info, just a reply :)

Running Your Bot

node yourBot9001.js

Done.

A Better Example

Here's a more practical example, meet protobot. Protobot hangs out on Freenode#prototype all day – stop by and say hi!

Credit & Junk

Written by Gianni Chiappetta – gf3.ca

I don't want to throw a license on this unless I really have to, they're kinda silly. However you can expect this code to remain free and open.