An xmpp chat bot with modular structure

Just another jabber bot. Why not?

Mission ------

Marvin was designed as a modular bot where all functionality provides by third-party modules. Core of bot it is just a loader for those plugins, and tool which is make interaction between plugins and end users easier.

Bot core methods ------

Core of the bot have some methods for plugins management. All core methods use ! mark at start.

!modules

prints all loaded modules

!functions

prints all available functions which is processed as commands

!aliases

prints all commands aliases with command names near to aliases

!reload [modulename]

loads (reloads) module if modulename passed. Reloads all modules from default pluggins directory otherwise.

!help [modulename]

prints help for module modulename. If no argument passed prints general help.

Functions ------

Functions is provided by modules. If function name presents of the string beginning a chat phrase is recognised as a bot command. For detail description of function creating look at the functions part of the Modules section below.

Aliases ------

Aliases it is just short names for functions. Each function can have unlimited count of aliases. Aliases begins with the % sign and recognises till the end of the line (will be fixed in next releases). More about aliases creation you can find in aliases part of Modules section below.

Functions and modules help provides by modules but help mechanism realised in core. To get module help you need to send '!help modulename' as command where modulename it is module path name. To get function help you need to pass 'help' as function parameter. To determine which module has this function and also get module help you need to pass 'help module' to module function as parameter.

Modules ======

This section describes internal structure of Marvin modules

Marvin module is a python class which have property _marvinModule set to True (or equivalent). Also modules can have optional properties which is used during module loading:

public

A list of functions which is avaliable for usage for user.

aliases

A dict of function aliases.

depends

A module depends.

Functions it is a module class methods. There are two types of functions availiable: public and private. Private functions are avaliable for use by module itself while public functions are available for end-users through the commands interface. To make function public you need to add its name to public module list.

All public functions must accept Message object as first parameter. To send the result moduel may use Message object method.

Aliases it is short names for functions. Aliases can be used anywhere in text and reconised as command. To make command alias its name must be added as list item of aliases dict of module class value with a key which is a function name.

Modules may have dependencies from another modules. To add dependence just add python-style path to module (from bot main dir) in depends variable of the module. Dependencies loads after subordinate module loaded (will be fixed). When dependencies is loaded it is avaliable through depends variable of the module. This variable provides an objects currently used in bot i.e. you gain access to all module instance function and variables.

Technical notes ======

Some additional technical information.

Message class have field described below.

type

Type of the message.

form

Message sender raw location (JID with resource).

user

Message sender JID.

resource

Message sender resource.

text

Raw message text. It is highly recommended to use ctext instead.

ctext

Message text which was been processed by core.

reply

Function which modules can use to send messages to chat.