Ybot

Ybot is a customizable bot which was inspired by GitHub's Hubot. What can you do with Ybot:

• Chat bot with many different plugins.
• Bridge between http and different chat systems like irc, xmpp and etc...
• Notification chat bot. See @erlnews twitter bot.
• Email bot.
• Logging (see lager_ybot_backend).

Features

• Ybot's core completely written in Erlang;
• Simultaneously run any number of bots on different transports;
• Web interface;
• Supports plugins in different technology:
  • Python plugins;
  • Ruby plugins;
  • Shell plugins;
  • Perl plugins;
  • Erlang/OTP plugins;
  • Elixir plugins;
  • Scala plugins;
• Command history with tunable limit;
• Dynamic search and loading of plugins;
• Very easily extensible, just put plugin to plugin directory;
• Supports IRC and IRC via SSL;
• Supports XMPP and XMPP via ssl;
• Supports Campfire
• HTTP interface;
• HipChat supporting;
• Flowdock supporting;
• Twitter supporting;
• Email supporting;
• Skype supporting;
• Talkerapp supporting;
• Notifications supporting.

Building and Running

First of all you must get your own Ybot:

git clone https://github.com/0xAX/Ybot.git

Or download the source file archive: .tar.gz or .zip

After getting source you need to download dependencies and build the source:

./rebar get-deps && ./rebar compile

Rename configration template ybot.config.template to ybot.config and edit configuration file and you can run your Ybot copy:

Start Ybot node:

./bin/start.sh

Connect to Ybot node console:

./bin/console.sh

Run on heroku

• Get you ybot and configure it.
• Download heroku

cd Ybot
heroku create your-application-name -s cedar
heroku config:add BUILDPACK_URL=http://github.com/heroku/heroku-buildpack-erlang.git
echo OTP_R15B01 > .preferred_otp_version
git commit "Select R15B01 as preferred OTP version" .preferred_otp_version
git push heroku master

Dependencies

• lager - A logging framework for Erlang/OTP.
• reloader - Mochiweb's reloader.
• ibrowse - Erlang http client.
• jiffy - JSON NIFs for Erlang.
• cowboy - Small, fast, modular HTTP server written in Erlang.
• mimetypes - Erlang MIME types library.
• erlang-oauth - An Erlang OAuth 1.0 implementation.
• Skype4Py - Platform independent Python wrapper for the Skype API.
• gen_smtpc - Simple erlang smtp client.

Transport

Ybot's basic transport is a network interface. Ybot is a chat bot and he spends all of his life chatting. Ybot receives chat messages and execute commands depending on those received messages. At that moment Ybot supports:

• IRC (+ssl supporting, +private messages supporting).
• XMPP MUC (+single user chat supporting, +private messages supporting, +ssl supporting).
• Campfire.
• HTTP.
• HipChat.
• Flowdock.
• Skype.
• Talkerapp.

And also write-only transports:

• Twitter
• Channel

Plugins

Ybot is a chat bot and it can execute different commands. Commands are simple chat messages. For example, a chat session:

you: Ybot math 1 + 5
Ybot: Answer: 6

Here are a few simple rules for structuring Ybot plugins.

• You must address messages to the Ybot.

• After addressing the bot you specify the command to be executed, for example math or ping. Every command consists from one word.

• After the command you can specify arguments. Ybot sends all arguments in '' and it turns them into one argument.

• One command = One plugin. Plugins must live in the plugins directory.

• Each plugin must have the correct extension, for example:

  • .py
  • .rb
  • .shell

• Erlang/OTP plugin - see example memory plugin

Containing Python, Ruby or shell code.

• The name of the plugin file must be the same name as the command. For example if we have a Ybot ping command, we must have a plugin named ping.py or ping.rb or ping.shell, etc.

• Plugin can consist of any code but write the results to STDOUT in the end.

Example Ybot:

Ybot math 3 ^ 2

Here Ybot calls the math plugin with the argument: '3 ^ 2'

Current plugins

• memory - Simple Key/Value memory.
• ackbar - show an Admiral Ackbar.
• chuck - Chuck Norris quotes.
• decide - Ybot try to help make decisions for you.
• github_status - Github status state.
• echo - simple echo plugin.
• help - Ybot help.
• ping - Ybot simple ping/pong.
• math - Ybot calculate math expressions.
• date - Ybot show date/time.
• pugme - Ybot pugme service plugin.
• erl - Ybot computation of erlang expression using tryerlang.org.
• today? - Ybot return current day.
• shorten_url - Ybot url shortener with goo.gl.
• hacker_news - Ybot download news from https://news.ycombinator.com/
• wat - Ybot random WAT image
• check-site - Ybot check site up/down state
• ruby - Ybot eval simple ruby expression
• ip - Ybot external ip
• hacker_help - Ybot search in stackoverflow.
• translate - use google translate from Ybot.
• url - url encode/decode plugin.

These are Ybot's core plugins. You can find other plugins at ybot-contrib or see at ybot plugins catalog.

Ybot brain REST API

Ybot brain allows to persist data using REST API. It is designed to support multiple storage engines, but the default is based on Mnesia.

REST API endpoint: http://localhost:8090/memories (port and host is configurable). Currently supported Content Type is application/json.

An example JSON memory object:

{
 "id":"88DAF3FFB0419E0A8368036200000553620002B99862000429C1",
 "plugin":"foo",
 "key":"key1",
 "value":"foo1",
 "created":"2013-03-13 23:45:00"
 }

Operations using brain API:

Operation	HTTP Verb	Url	Description
Insert new	POST	/memories	Pass memory object without id and created field
Update existing	PUT	/memories/id	Pass memory object without id and created field
Remove by id	DELETE	/memories/id	Delete field by id
Get all	GET	/memories	Return all fileds
Get by id	GET	/memories/id	Return field by id
Get by plugin	GET	/memories/?plugin=foo	Return data by plugin name
Get by key	GET	/memories/?key=bar	Return field by key
Get by value	GET	/memories/?value=foobar	Return field by value

Contribute

Ybot is an open source project under the Erlang public license (see LICENSE file). Issues, questions and patches are welcome.

If you're hacking Ybot core, please, before sending your pull request, pull and merge Ybot master to avoid conflicts.

• Fork main ybot repository (https://github.com/0xAX/Ybot).
• Make your changes in your clone of ybot.
• Test it.
• Send pull request.

Author

Creator of Ybot @0xAX.

Thank you all who participating in Ybot developing. Names and contact information of those who helped, you can find the file AUTHORS.