talos

An ExpressJS-inspired middleware framework for IRC bots in Node.

var Talos = require('talos'),
    bot = new Talos({
        host: 'irc.freenode.net',
        nick: 'baconbot',
        channels: ['#baconmania']
    });

bot.use(Talos.listenFor(/^!baconbot/));
bot.use(Talos.tokenize());
bot.use(Talos.router());

bot.onMessage('echo', function(req, res, next) {
    res.send(req.tokenized.args.join(' '));
    next();
});

bot.connect();

baconmania: !baconbot echo this and that
baconbot: this and that

Installation

$ npm install talos

Writing middleware

Each piece of middleware you write should take three arguments: req, res, and next.

req

The req object presents the following interface:

var req = {
    fromUser: 'somenick',
    channel: 'somechannel',
    metadata: { ... }, // passed through from node-irc
    incomingMessage: 'some message'
};

res

The res object exposes a single function, send(message). Call this function to send the string message back to the channel or nick which sent a message to your bot.

next

Every piece of middleware you write must call next() to pass control to the next piece of middleware in the pipeline.

You can call next(err) to skip the remaining middleware in the pipeline. Talos will print the given error to stderr.

Bundled middleware

Talos comes with a minimal set of middleware which implements functionality that most IRC bots will need.

listenFor

Ignores all messages which don't match the given trigger RegEx.

When a message comes in and matches the given trigger, the trigger is removed from the incoming message text before control is passed to the next request handler.

bot.use(Talos.listenFor(/^!baconbot/));

tokenize

Splits each incoming message up into a command and a list of arguments. These get stored in a new tokenized property on the req object.

bot.use(Talos.tokenize());

If the bot received the message echo foo bar baz, then the req object would look something like:

var req = {
    ...,
    tokenized: {
        command: 'echo',
        args: ['foo', 'bar', 'baz']
    },
    ...
}

bannedUsers

Requires Talos.tokenize()

bot.use(Talos.tokenize());
...
bot.use(Talos.bannedUsers());

You can also pass in a list of banned users to initialize with.

bot.use(Talos.bannedUsers(['baconmania', 'otherbannednick']));

With this middleware activated, you can say ignore <nick> and unignore <nick> in IRC to ban and unban users, respectively.

router

Requires Talos.tokenize()

Exposes the Talos.prototype.onMessage([trigger,] handler) function.

When an incoming message's first word token matches any of the defined triggers, each matching trigger's associated handler is called.

To define a catch-all handler, simply omit the trigger argument when calling onMessage(). Note that calling onMessage(handler), with no trigger, is equivalent to calling use(handler).

bot.use(Talos.tokenize());
...
bot.use(Talos.router());

bot.onMessage('echo', function(req, res, next) {
    res.send(req.tokenized.args.join(' '));
    next();
});

bot.onMessage(function(req, res, next) {
    res.send('you hit a catch-all handler.');
    next();
});

Low-level access to IRC client

res.send() is an easy way to reply to the channel or user which originally messaged your bot. If you have a more sophisticated use-case, you may wish to drop down to the node-irc client used by Talos.

var Talos = require('talos'),
    bot = new Talos({ ... });

bot.use(function(req, res, next) {
    bot._client.say('#someOtherChannel', 'hello');
});

Refer to the node-irc module for more information.