GoIRC Client Framework

Acquiring and Building

Pretty simple, really:

goinstall github.com/fluffle/goirc

You can build the test client also with:

make
./gobot

This will connect to freenode and join #go-nuts by default, so be careful ;-)

Using the framework

Synopsis:

import irc "github.com/fluffle/goirc/client"
func main() {
    c := irc.New("nick", "ident", "real name")
    // Optionally, turn on debugging
    c.Debug = true
    // Optionally, enable SSL
    c.SSL = true

	// Add handlers to do things here!
	// e.g. watching for disconnection from the server.
	connected := true
	c.AddHandler("disconnected",
		func(conn *irc.Conn, line *irc.Line) { connected = false })
    
	// Tell client to connect
	if err := c.Connect("irc.freenode.net"); err != nil {
	    fmt.Printf("Connection error: %s\n", err.String())
    }

	// Loop until client gets disconnected, printing any errors
    for connected {
        if err := <-c.Err; err != nil {
            fmt.Printf("goirc error: %s", err.String())
        }
    }
}

The test client provides a good (if basic) example of how to use the framework. Reading client/handlers.go gives a more in-depth look at how handlers can be written. Commands to be sent to the server (e.g. PRIVMSG) are methods of the main *Conn struct, and can be found in client/commands.go (not all of the possible IRC commands are implemented yet). Events are produced directly from the messages from the IRC server, so you have to handle e.g. "332" for RPL_TOPIC to get the topic for a channel.

The vast majority of handlers implemented within the framework deal with state tracking of all nicks in any channels that the client is also present in. It's likely that this state tracking will become optional in the near future.

Misc.

Sorry the documentation is crap. Use the source, Luke.

Feedback on design decisions is welcome. I am indebted to Matt Gruen for his work on go-bot which inspired the re-organisation and channel-based communication structure of *Conn.send() and *Conn.recv(). I'm sure things could be more asynchronous, still.

This code is (c) 2009-11 Alex Bramley, and released under the same licence terms as Go itself.