How do you address data returned to a socket in python?

Question

Say you are telneting into IRC to figure out how it all works. As you issue commands the IRC server returns data telling you what it's doing. Once I have created a default script that basically is how a normal IRC connection between server and client occurs, if it ever deviates from that it won't tell me what is wrong. I need to be able to throw exceptions based on what the server returns to me. How do I do that in python?

Answer 1

Twisted is an event-driven networking engine written in Python, and includes support for IRC protocols. To access IRC functionality, import it:

from twisted.words.protocols import irc

See an example here: ircLogBot.py - connects to an IRC server and logs all messages. The example __doc__:

"""An example IRC log bot - logs a channel's events to a file.

If someone says the bot's name in the channel followed by a ':',
e.g.

  <foo> logbot: hello!

    the bot will reply:

  <logbot> foo: I am a log bot

Run this script with two arguments, the channel name the bot should
connect to, and file to log to, e.g.:

  $ python ircLogBot.py test test.log

will log channel #test to the file 'test.log'.
"""

Answer 2

Here's a tutorial which pretty much walks you through an IRC client using sockets in Python:

• Python and IRC