Hack 68 Link Channels on Multiple Networks

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figs/moderate.gif figs/hack68.gif

How do you encourage a community on one network to talk to those on another network? Create a bot that can relay messages between the networks .

Most IRC users are happy staying connected to just a single IRC network. Joining more networks inevitably means joining more channels, and, before you know it, you've run out of space on your screen. The problem here is that you might end up missing out on discussions with people who have similar interests on the other networks.

Sometimes there are other reasons for communities to be divided across two (or more) networks. A firewall or other technical constraint may prevent some users from connecting to one of the networks. But as long as someone (or something) can connect to all of them, it will be possible for messages to be relayed to other users. This can be done either manually, such as, "Hey Paul, did you hear about Dave's great idea on the other network?" or automatically with a bot that relays all messages between the servers.

Bots that link channels on different IRC networks are often called relay bots , as they are used to relay messages from one network to all the other networks they are connected to. Simple relay bots are straightforward to implementall they have to do is connect to a few networks, join the same channel on each network, and read all the messages they see. Each time a message is received, it must be passed on to all networks except the one it was received from.

This hack will walk you through the process of creating your own relay bot.

11.2.1 The Code

This hack will use the PircBot IRC API [Hack #35] to connect to each IRC network. Each connection will be dealt with by its own PircBot subclass, with a single Controller class being used to pass on messages to the other connections. The Controller is essentially a collection of separate IRC bots and is used to link them together.

Each bot just has to listen for messages and pass them on to the Controller, so there is not too much code to write. Save the following as ChannelLinkBot.java :

 import org.jibble.pircbot.*; public class ChannelLinkBot extends PircBot {          // This is the Controller that we will pass messages to.     private Controller controller;          public ChannelLinkBot(Controller c, String server) throws Exception {         controller = c;         setName("MyLinkBot");         setVerbose(true);         connect(server);     }          public void onMessage(String channel, String sender,             String login, String hostname, String message) {                  // Pass the message on to the Controller.         controller.shareMessage(this, Colors.BOLD + "<" + sender + "> " +                 Colors.NORMAL + message);     }      } 

As you can see from this code, whenever one of the bots receives a message, it shares that message with the Controller. Each bot is passed a reference to the Controller in its constructor, along with the name of the server to connect to.

All the Controller needs to do is maintain a list of all of its bots and allow each of those bots to send messages to all the other bots. A LinkedList is used to store the collection of bots.

Save the following as Controller.java :

 import java.util.*; public class Controller {          private LinkedList bots = new LinkedList( );     private String channel;          public Controller(String channel) {         this.channel = channel;     }          // Add a new bot to the list and make it join the channel.     public synchronized void add(ChannelLinkBot bot) {         bot.joinChannel(channel);         bots.add(bot);     }          // Share a message with all other networks.     public synchronized void shareMessage(ChannelLinkBot from, String message) {         Iterator it = bots.iterator( );         while (it.hasNext( )) {             ChannelLinkBot bot = (ChannelLinkBot) it.next( );             if (bot != from) {                 bot.sendMessage(channel, message);             }         }     }      } 

The add method in the Controller is used to add a new bot to the LinkedList . Each time a new bot is added, it is told to join the same channel. Note that this method is synchronized, so it is safe to add new bots while the program is running.

The shareMessage method can be called by each of the bots and the Controller then iterates through the list of bots and tells each bot to send that message to its network. The bot that called this method must not be told to send the message; otherwise , it will simply end up repeating everything that is said on its network.

The main method of this program must create a Controller object and add a bot for each network it will connect to. You can supply these arguments through the command line.

Save the following as ChannelLinkBotMain.java :

 public class ChannelLinkBotMain {          public static void main(String[] args) {         String channel = args[0];         Controller controller = new Controller(channel);                  for (int i = 1; i < args.length; i++) {             try {                 ChannelLinkBot bot = new ChannelLinkBot(controller, args[i]);                 controller.add(bot);             }             catch (Exception e) {                 System.out.println("Could not add a bot: " + e);             }         }     }      } 

11.2.2 Running the Hack

Compile the bot like so:

 C:\java\ChannelLinkBot>  javac -classpath .;pircbot.jar *.java  

When you run the bot, you must specify the channel name as the first command-line argument. All subsequent arguments will be treated as server names , and a bot will be created to connect to each of them.

To make your bot connect to irc.freenode.net and an IRC server running on your own machine, you can run it like this:

 C:\java\ChannelLinkBot>  java -classpath .;pircbot.jar ChannelLinkBotMain     #irchacks irc.freenode.net localhost  

As soon as the bot has connected to each server, it will join the channel #irchacks. When it has joined at least two servers, it will be ready to begin relaying messages.

11.2.3 The Results

When the bot is running, it will relay messages from each network to all other networks. Each message is prefixed with the nickname of the sender and is made bold to make it stand out more than the name of the bot. This gives the impression of everybody being in the same channel on the same IRC network, as shown in Figure 11-1.

Figure 11-1. Connecting a channel on two different networks
figs/irch_1101.gif

This kind of bot is not really suitable for running in very busy channels, as the volume of traffic could cause the server to disconnect it for flooding the server as it relays messages. If channels are large enough for this to be a problem, then there is probably not much to be gained by linking them anyway.

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IRC Hacks
IRC Hacks
ISBN: 059600687X
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 175
Authors: Paul Mutton

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