Irc Bots in Twisted with Invite-only Channels

Stardate: 90672.08

I'm kind of obsessed with writing irc bots in python using twisted.words.protocols. A longer example of how to do that may come later but for now I want to show you one of the best ways to debug your twisted irc bot and a vector to get really cool behavior not intended by the twisted developers. On an IRC server I frequent channels that are secured by forcing users to first login with NickServ then to ask ChanServ for an invite. The problem is you must join the channel after your receive the invitation from ChanServ. My solution to this problem is below, using irc_UNKNOWN and the ircLogBot.py example in the twisted.words documentation:

class BeerBot(irc.IRCClient):
    """A logging IRC bot."""
    """That also does beer things."""

...


    def signedOn(self):
        """Called when bot has succesfully signed on to server."""
        self.logger.log('identifying to nickserv')
        self.msg("NickServ", "identify %s" % config.password)
        self.logger.log('requesting channel invite')
        self.msg("ChanServ", "invite %s" % config.channel)
        self.join(self.factory.channel)
        self.logger.log('channel joinied')

...


    def irc_unknown(self, prefix, command, params):
        self.logger.log("{0}, {1}, {2}".format(prefix, command, params))
        if command == "INVITE":
          self.join(params[1])

The irc_unknown is great because it simulates the 'window 1' on most irc clients(well most command line irc clients[and by that I mean weechat and irssi{and by that I mean irssi-for-life!}]). You can add if statements to grab the other 'named' irc control messages. The others are numbered and you can split those out as well. One of the bad things about irc is different irc servers behave differently. It must be a frustrating and thankless task for the maintainers of irssi/weechat/t.p.w to provide such a universal interface to all irc servers. (lol jk, irssi hasn't had an update since like 2010.) [but no really, thank you irssi devs *internet hug*].

The source code for beerbot can be found at my github.