Ecosyste.ms: Awesome

An open API service indexing awesome lists of open source software.

Awesome Lists | Featured Topics | Projects

https://github.com/RJ/irccat

IRC bot that simplifies posting to IRC from shell scripts
https://github.com/RJ/irccat

Last synced: about 2 months ago
JSON representation

IRC bot that simplifies posting to IRC from shell scripts

Awesome Lists containing this project

README 

        
## Archived - See irccloud/irccat



I'm not running this java version any more, please see this [irccat clone in go](https://github.com/irccloud/irccat).



IRCcat

======



As in `cat` to IRC. 



IRCcat does 2 things:



1) Listens on a specific ip:port and writes incoming data to an IRC channel.

   This is useful for sending various announcements and log messages to irc

   from shell scripts, Nagios and other services.



2) Hands off commands issued on irc to a handler program (eg: shell script)

   and responds to irc with the output of the handler script. This only 

   happens for commands addressed to irccat: or prefixed with ?.

   (easily extend irccat functionality with your own scripts)



Installation

------------

Edit the irccat.xml so it knows which irc server, channel etc..

Check you have sun jvm >=1.5 (java -version)



This will build and package irccat as a jar:



$ ant dist



Then, using the appropriate config file:



$ ant -Dconfigfile=./examples/irccat.xml run



Also, you'll probably want to install netcat.



Sending text to IRC

-------------------

By default IRCCat listens on 127.0.0.1:12345, and sends data to the 

default (first) channels.  In a networked server environment you will p

robably want to make it listen on the private LAN interface.



Examples: 



$ echo "Hello World" | netcat -q0 localhost 12345

$ tail -f /var/log/www/error.log | netcat localhost 12345



In a server environment, consider adding a hostname to your internal DNS or 

using a virtual IP for irccat to listen on, in case you want to move irccat

to another box later.



Sending to specific channels

----------------------------

To send to a specific channel rather than the default, put the channel name

as the first word in the data (the channel name will be stripped):



$ echo "#mychannel hello world" | netcat -q0 machinename 12345



This sends "hello world" to #mychannel



First word defines the recipients, you can use comma separated list. 

# prefix indicates channel, @ indicates a nick.



Examples:

	

	- "#chan blah blah"

	  just sends to #chan

	

	- "@RJ psst, this is a pm"

	  just sends via PM to user RJ

	

	- "#channel1,#channel2,@RJ,@Russ blah blah this is the message"

	  this sends to 2 channels, and 2 users (RJ, Russ)

	

	- "#* Attention, something important"

	  this sends to all channels the bot is in	

	

	- "#chan %REDroses are red%NORMAL, grass is #GREENgreen#NORMAL"

	  you can use colors too, see IRCCat.java for the full list;

	  Either "#" or "%" will work.



Changing topics in channels

---------------------------

To change the topic in a channel (rather than sending a message), use

the prefix %TOPIC.



$ echo "%TOPIC #mychannel hello world" | netcat -q0 machinename 12345



This changes the topic of #mychannel to "hello world" (assuming the bot

has permission to set the topic)



Second word defines the recipient channels. You can use a comma separated

list. Nick recipients will be accepted, but silently ignored.



Examples:



  - "%TOPIC #chan new topic"

    just changes the topic of #chan



  - "%TOPIC #channel1,#channel2 this channel is great"

    this changes the topics of two channels



  - "%TOPIC #* Important Topic"

    this changes the topics in all channels the bot is in



Built-in commands

-----------------

There are a handful of built-in commands for instructing the bot at runtime.



Built-in commands are prefixed with a !



	!join #chan pass		- joins another channel. pass is optional

	!part #chan				- parts chan

	!channels				- lists channels the bot is in

	!spam blah blah..		- repeats your message in all joined channels

	!exit					- System.exit()



Trust

-----



Any command (?.. !..) uttered in a channel with irccat in is executed and 

implicitly trusted. 



Any command PMed to irccat is ignored unless the user 

is joined to the default (first) channel in the config file.

	



SVN commit notifications

------------------------

svn hooks let you announce commits etc.

For example, try this in your SVN repo/hooks/post-commit file:



REPOS="$1"

REV="$2"

LOG=`/usr/bin/svnlook log -r $REV $REPOS`

AUTHOR=`/usr/bin/svnlook author -r $REV $REPOS`

echo "SVN commit by $AUTHOR (r$REV) '$LOG' http://web-svn-interface.example.com/?rev=$REV" | netcat -q0 machinename 12345



Nagios alerts to irc

--------------------

Buried in our nagios config is this, from misccommands.cfg:



define command {

    command_name    host-notify-by-irc

    command_line    /bin/echo "#sys Nagios: Host '$HOSTALIAS$' is $HOSTSTATE$ - Info: $OUTPUT$" | /bin/netcat -q 1 irccathost 12345

}



define command {

    command_name    service-notify-by-irc

    command_line    /bin/echo "#sys Nagios: Service $SERVICEDESC$ on '$HOSTALIAS$' is $SERVICESTATE$ - Info: $OUTPUT$" | /bin/netcat -q 1 irccathost 12345

}



And in contacts.cfg:



define contact{

        contact_name                    irccat

        alias                   irccat

        service_notification_period     24x7

        host_notification_period        24x7

        service_notification_options    w,c,r

        host_notification_options       d,r

        service_notification_commands service-notify-by-irc

        host_notification_commands  host-notify-by-irc

        email   blah@blah

}



Feedback

--------

Email:  [email protected]

Web:    http://www.last.fm/user/RJ (work, and the reason irccat exists)

Web:    http://www.metabrew.com/   (blog)

Irc:    irc://irc.audioscrobbler.com/audioscrobbler