Python IRC client: write from scratch or write plugin for existing framework?

Question

For our company I'd like to have a Python based IRC bot which checks whether the websites of our clients are still up and running. More specific: I want to list a number of URL which should be visited every, say, 15 minutes. If it fails, the URL should be checked again after 5 minutes. If retrieving the URL still doesn't result in an HTTP status code 200, it should echo the failing URL in the channel so we can investigate it.

I've written a plugin for Supybot some time ago that basically does some of the above in a crude but effective way. If I want to expand the functionality of the current code to the above 'specs' I need to do some major refactoring; basically it would mean starting from scratch.

Which raises the question: should I write a better plugin for Supybot, matching the new requirements, or go for something else altogether? Should I start from scratch (learning the most, implementing the relevant RFCs myself, spending more time than planned) or is there a suitable framework which handles the basic IRC stuff?

Answer 1

To me it sounds like a case of your application wanting to talk IRC, and my gut reaction would be to use Twisted, which has IRC clients. This may or may not be the right solution for you, but at least it's worth investigating.

Answer 2

I vote for a completely new plugin for Supybot. Learn more ;)

If you won't do so much, try python irclib. It's a (still maintained) python lib for IRC.

Twisted may also be ok, but it's a little but too much...

Answer 3

Writing a simple IRC bot isn't that hard. I have a template I keep using for my bots, which range from SVN bots to voting-status bots to bots which check connections to certain IPs and change the channel's topic according to the result.

I can share the source if you'd like, though there's nothing like writing your own :)

Answer 4

I finally decided to create use Twisted for my bot. As to the why:

• Supybot already has a lot of functionality. And that can be a good thing: just create a simple plugin, hook it up and start using the bot. The downside is that you may not like some of the functionality already provided for. As an example: I didn't like the fact that it responded to everything (Error: "foo" is not a valid command.). I'm sure it can be turned off somehow somewhere, but these kind of small things bothered me.

• The Python IRC client library on the other hand felt a little too bare bones. Especially since I needed threading to have the bot check a whether a number of websites are still alive while remaining responsive in the channel.

• If the irclib felt like too low level, writing a bot from scratch would certainly be. While I definitely wanted to learn something, I also wanted to focus on the actual functionality of the bot, without being bothered too much by the 'basic' stuff (e.g. I don't necessarily want to write the code to identify the bot, I like to just have some configuration setting to store the nickname and password and handle this for me.)

Twisted has a nice example of a logging bot which can be used as a starting point. Furthermore: in the future it should not be too hard to write a small webserver (using Twisted obviously) to display the output of the bot.

Tip: besides the Twisted documentation you can also take a look at the October 2008 issue of Python Magazine for the article "A Twisted Logging Server" by Doug Farrell.

Thanks to the ones who answered the question. You set me on the right track. :)