Full-featured Python IRC library for Python.
This library provides a low-level implementation of the IRC protocol for Python. It provides an event-driven IRC client framework. It has a fairly thorough support for the basic IRC protocol, CTCP, and DCC connections.
In order to understand how to make an IRC client, it's best to read up first on the IRC specifications.
The main features of the IRC client framework are:
- Abstraction of the IRC protocol.
- Handles multiple simultaneous IRC server connections.
- Handles server PONGing transparently.
- Messages to the IRC server are done by calling methods on an IRC connection object.
- Messages from an IRC server triggers events, which can be caught by event handlers.
- Multiple opations for reading from and writing to an IRC server:
you can use sockets in an internal
select()loop OR use python3's asyncio event loop - Functions can be registered to execute at specified times by the event-loop.
- Decodes CTCP tagging correctly (hopefully); I haven't seen any other IRC client implementation that handles the CTCP specification subtilties.
- A kind of simple, single-server, object-oriented IRC client class that dispatches events to instance methods is included.
- DCC connection support.
Current limitations:
- The IRC protocol shines through the abstraction a bit too much.
- Data is not written asynchronously to the server (and DCC peers),
i.e. the
write()may block if the TCP buffers are stuffed. - Like most projects, documentation is lacking ...
- DCC is not currently implemented in the asyncio-based version
Unfortunately, this library isn't as well-documented as I would like
it to be. I think the best way to get started is to read and
understand the example program irccat, which is included in the
distribution.
The following modules might be of interest:
irc.clientThe library itself. Read the code along with comments and docstrings to get a grip of what it does. Use it at your own risk and read the source, Luke!
irc.client_aioAll the functionality of the above library, but utilizing Python 3's native asyncio library for the core event loop. Interface/API is otherwise functionally identical to the classes in
irc.clientirc.botAn IRC bot implementation.
irc.serverA basic IRC server implementation. Suitable for testing, but not intended as a production service.
Invoke the server with
python -m irc.server.
Example scripts in the scripts directory:
irccatA simple example of how to use the IRC client.
irccatreads text from stdin and writes it to a specified user or channel on an IRC server.irccat2The same as above, but using the
SimpleIRCClientclass.aio_irccatSame as above, but uses the asyncio-based event loop in
AioReactorinstead of theselect()basedReactor.aio_irccat2Same as above, but using the
AioSimpleIRCClientclassservermapAnother simple example.
servermapconnects to an IRC server, finds out what other IRC servers there are in the net and prints a tree-like map of their interconnections.testbotAn example bot that uses the
SingleServerIRCBotclass fromirc.bot. The bot enters a channel and listens for commands in private messages or channel traffic. It also accepts DCC invitations and echos back sent DCC chat messages.dccreceiveReceives a file over DCC.
dccsendSends a file over DCC.
NOTE: If you're running one of the examples on a unix command line, you need
to escape the # symbol in the channel. For example, use \\#test or
"#test" instead of #test.
The library includes a default event Scheduler as
irc.schedule.DefaultScheduler,
but this scheduler can be replaced with any other scheduler. For example,
to use the schedule package,
include it
in your dependencies and install it into the IRC library as so:
- class ScheduleScheduler(irc.schedule.IScheduler):
- def execute_every(self, period, func):
- schedule.every(period).do(func)
- def execute_at(self, when, func):
- schedule.at(when).do(func)
- def execute_after(self, delay, func):
- raise NotImplementedError("Not supported")
- def run_pending(self):
- schedule.run_pending()
irc.client.Reactor.scheduler_class = ScheduleScheduler
By default, the IRC library attempts to decode all incoming streams as
UTF-8, even though the IRC spec stipulates that no specific encoding can be
expected. Since assuming UTF-8 is not reasonable in the general case, the IRC
library provides options to customize decoding of input by customizing the
ServerConnection class. The buffer_class attribute on the
ServerConnection determines which class is used for buffering lines from the
input stream, using the buffer module in jaraco.stream. By default it is
buffer.DecodingLineBuffer, but may be
re-assigned with another class, following the interface of buffer.LineBuffer.
The buffer_class attribute may be assigned for all instances of
ServerConnection by overriding the class attribute.
For example:
from jaraco.stream import buffer
irc.client.ServerConnection.buffer_class = buffer.LenientDecodingLineBufferThe LenientDecodingLineBuffer attempts UTF-8 but falls back to latin-1, which
will avoid UnicodeDecodeError in all cases (but may produce unexpected
behavior if an IRC user is using another encoding).
The buffer may be overridden on a per-instance basis (as long as it's overridden before the connection is established):
server = irc.client.Reactor().server()
server.buffer_class = buffer.LenientDecodingLineBuffer
server.connect()Alternatively, some clients may still want to decode the input using a different encoding. To decode all input as latin-1 (which decodes any input), use the following:
irc.client.ServerConnection.buffer_class.encoding = 'latin-1'Or decode to UTF-8, but use a replacement character for unrecognized byte sequences:
irc.client.ServerConnection.buffer_class.errors = 'replace'Or, to simply ignore all input that cannot be decoded:
class IgnoreErrorsBuffer(buffer.DecodingLineBuffer):
def handle_exception(self):
pass
irc.client.ServerConnection.buffer_class = IgnoreErrorsBufferThe library requires text for message processing, so a decoding buffer must be used. Clients must use one of the above techniques for decoding input to text.
Enjoy.
Maintainer: Jason R. Coombs <jaraco@jaraco.com>
Original Author: Joel Rosdahl <joel@rosdahl.net>
Copyright © 1999-2002 Joel Rosdahl Copyright © 2011-2016 Jason R. Coombs Copyright © 2009 Ferry Boender