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Unread 18 Mar 2003, 07:39   #1
Rayden
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Coding an irc client?
Well, first of all i do not want to hear "why? there are so many out there already" that's not the point!

I've planned on doing this for quite sometime and after seeing all the challenges roaming around here i thought i might post it.

What i want to do is make a simple, text-based irc client on the unix platform. Reason i say simple is because i'm aiming for very high adaptabiliy and modification. Scripting support is therefore something valuable. I've not decided if it's going to be a client based language or just support for tcl/perl or whatnot.

Any suggestions just post. I'd like to maybe gather a team of people.
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Unread 18 Mar 2003, 12:38   #2
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There's no real reason to gather a team, an IRC client is a small enough project that one should be able to handle it alone. I recommend reading up on ncurses. Perhaps a look through the irssi source would be informative. I believe titus has written his own (gui) client for X, and queball was in the process of writing a mIRC clone for linux. Personally I'd recommend scripting engines for perl, python and ruby. With those three you've covered most bases in the scripting world.

Irssi is written in C, but tbh that might be 'overkill' for an IRC client.

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Unread 18 Mar 2003, 13:06   #3
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You can use SWIG to generate interfaces for several languages automatically, if you know a bit of C or C++.
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Unread 18 Mar 2003, 18:21   #4
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One of my mates made a fairly advanced Java IRC client (http://freshmeat.net/projects/mtlirc/) - it's kinda not 100% finished but it shows you what one guy can do in his spare time.

Also, he's currently doing http://freshmeat.net/projects/mtlirc2msn/ which is a gateway to connect any IRC client to MSN Messenger - quite handy.

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Unread 18 Mar 2003, 18:34   #5
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a copy of the irc RFCs will likely be useful to you.
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Unread 18 Mar 2003, 20:06   #6
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Back again.
Basicly, all you need to make a basic IRC client is the ability to control sockets and the ability to parse text.
Specifically, text 'tokenisation' is useful as all IRC communication consists of a command portion and a text portion, which are seperated by a colon.

eg of sending something to a channel:
Code:
PRIVMSG #forums :this text gets sent to the channel
eg of recieving something from a channel:
Code:
:[email protected] PRIVMSG #planetarion :at Students Union
IRC issues control codes in some statements to enable clients to filter (and set and respond to) important information, states, and variables. For example, this the notification you get for the topic of #planetarion when you join:
Code:
:London.UK.Eu.Netgamers.org 332 megla #planetarion :PA Status: 'Westerly, Moderate to Good, rising slowly' || CH Log on the portal || Congrats to RIT for winning PA @ i15 || http://toolkit.planetarion.com [NEW: Battlecalc]
Here you can see the "channel topic is <blah>" control code is 332.
All of this info is available in the RFCs which NB3 nicely linked you to.
For display purposes, all the info is there in it's raw form which is why you can use IRC in telnet if you're insane enough (that's how I just got those raw outputs) but being in more than one channel at once quickly gets impossible to follow, so it's up to you to parse all the incomming statements and redirect them to different windows or however you plan to do it.
Parsing the text correctly is by far the hardest bit - the networking involved is about as simple as it gets.

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Unread 18 Mar 2003, 21:06   #7
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Lo, I believe Rayden knows what is involved in the protocol, and is asking for more high-level information. But it's strange that you say parsing is the hard bit. Parsing is easy with or without explicit regexps, the hardest thing (for me at least) is getting it to work properly on all the major networks and to interoperate properly with mIRC rather that just to the spec, and trying to build abstractions on a shaky protocol.

Projects in general? Start small, work hard. Write down your ideas if you have them. Try to do things somehow differently. Doing research is good, and fun.
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Unread 18 Mar 2003, 21:32   #8
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When you talk about interoperating with mIRC are you refering to DCC/fserve/CTCP?

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Unread 18 Mar 2003, 22:28   #9
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Quote:
Originally posted by meglamaniac
When you talk about interoperating with mIRC are you refering to DCC/fserve/CTCP?
Not DCC and CTCP per se since they have RFCs. I believe mIRC has weird quoting or something similar that took me a while to notice, and it is weirdness in general - small discrepencies to any standard - which make IRC protocol code laborious to write.
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Unread 21 Mar 2003, 07:09   #10
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what queball said.. i know the rfc.

yes i can do this alone, BUT.. three brains are better than one right?
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Unread 21 Mar 2003, 07:26   #11
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Quote:
Originally posted by Rayden
what queball said.. i know the rfc.

yes i can do this alone, BUT.. three brains are better than one right?
Not necessarily true.

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Unread 24 Mar 2003, 14:58   #12
Rayden
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no one wanted to help/join?

my email is [email protected] if anybody changes their minds ttyl
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Unread 24 Mar 2003, 16:30   #13
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Re: Coding an irc client?
Quote:
Originally posted by Rayden

What i want to do is make a simple, text-based irc client on the unix platform. Reason i say simple is because i'm aiming for very high adaptabiliy and modification. Scripting support is therefore something valuable. I've not decided if it's going to be a client based language or just support for tcl/perl or whatnot.
I would, but I feel its reinventing the wheel.

Also I got fking bored of writing stuff for irc after I did Samson.
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