Make your own robot that knows how to speak many protocols, and can be taught more.

By installing globally you gain access to the bots(1) tool which can generate bots for you.

npm -g install bots

So, you want to build your own 'bot. You've heard that all the cool hip startups have their own office 'bot, you know, the one that monitors the CI system, can deploy the site, play music over the office speakers AND knows who's in the office based on their smartphones wi-fi presence. Well follow along and you can build your very own robot servant to perform your nefarious deeds.

First you need to get the parts to build the bot. You'll need to get setup with node(1) and it's de-facto package manager, npm(1). Then create a project and get the parts.

mkdir coolbot && cd coolbot
npm install bots

Now you'll need to give the robot some personality, try putting the following in a file called coolbot.js.

// Pull in the bots framework.
var bots = require('bots');

// Create your own cool bot and give it a name.
var coolbot = bots.createBot('coolbot 0.0.1');

// Tell this cool bot to use the CLI interface (stdin/stdout).
coolbot.use(bots.cli());

// Add a description and it will appear when the bot hears "help".
coolbot.desc('ping', "Test I'm working with a ping");

// Assign an action to the bot, first argument is the regex to match,
// second is the callback to be invoked when this message is matched.
coolbot.hear(/ping/, function(message) {

  // Respond to the person who sent the message, note that you don't
  // *have* to call `message.say`.
  message.say("PONG");
});

// Start you cool bot listening on the interfaces you have assigned.
coolbot.start();

Now try running it:

$ node coolbot.js ping
PONG
$

This example uses the cli interface, this can be useful for testing, and the bot can take commands on stdin, so can be used in a pipe, but for other services you'll need to use different interfaces.

Get the code and run the tests.

git clone https://github.com/hecticjeff/bots
cd bots
npm install
npm test

Parts of the dsl design were inspired by defunkt/evilbot.

Copyright (c) 2011 Chris Mytton