ilbot - an IRC Log Bot

On #perl6 we had the need for a irc log that could easily be accessed with a web interface. So I wrote one.

It consists of an IRC bot based on Bot::Basicbot that logs into a (mysql) database, and a web frontend that displays the data nicely.

Features

Privacy

If you want to write something in a channel that is logged by ilbot, and don't want that line to be logged, prepend it with the string [off].

An @ sign proceeded and followed by letters and numbers are turned into a small image showing an @ sign to prevent email adresses from beeing maschine readable.

Layout

Just take a look at the #perl6 irc log to get an idea how the generated logs look like.

Requirements

In order to run ilbot and the associated CGI scripts, you need a web server

... with a mysql database
... on which you have shell access (to run the logging bot)
... where you can install Perl modules from CPAN as you wish
... with a running Apache Server, and .htaccess and mod_rewrite enabled

It's preferable to run on a separate virtual hosts (the rewrite rules and templates aren't tested for a different case; that said they should work).

Download

The source code lives on github.

git clone git://github.com/moritz/ilbot.git

Pre-Requsites for running ilbot

To be able to install and run ilbot, you need ...

a mysql database
Apache with a virtual host, and either access to the virtual host config file, or the ability to overwrite settings in your .htaccess file
mod_rewrite
to be able to install CPAN modules
to be able to run non-CGI Perl programs

Installation

To install these scripts on your system you need to

Create a database, you can use ilbot.sql for that if you use MySQL
Install all dependencies, among them are the following Perl modules from CPAN:
- Bot::BasicBot
- Calendar::Simple
- Config::File
- CGI
- Date::Simple
- DBI
- CGI::Carp
- Encode::Guess
- HTML::Entities
- HTML::Template
- HTTP::Headers
- File::Slurp
- Regexp::Common
- Text::Table
- Cache::Cache
Modify all config files, hopefully they are self-explanatory. Be sure to leave the NO_CACHE = 1 directrive in cgi.conf for now.
Copy (or link) the files of the cgi/ directory to where your webserver can find them, and edit the colors hash to fit your needs. Please be sure to to include the .htacess file, which is hidden in default UNIX directory listings. here is an example virtual host configuration file.
Be sure to password-protect the file spam.pl with a .htaccess file.
Edit cgi/footer.tmpl and insert your name and Homepage in the "Provided by..." sentence, and add your contact details (and delete mine, please).
Once you're happy with your setup, enable caching by deleting the NO_CACHE = 1 line from cgi.conf

Perhaps a more detailed description will follow.

Testimonial

By Eric Kow:

As a Darcs Team member, I'm really happy with the logging that Moritz has provided for us. Being able to link back to discussions at a specific time and having them be so easy to read or browse through later on is great. It's not just that it looks nice, but that it over all works very well.

Other sites using ilbot

customized version of ilbot