A simplified irccat 'clone'.

Main features of pyCAT are:

1. Listen on a given port and relay messages to an IRC channel.

2. Send messages in channel to an external script for parsing, passing output back to channel.

pyCAT requires Python and irclib.py (http://python-irclib.sourceforge.net/).

Usage: pycat server[:port][,server[:port]] nickname channel [options]

Examples:
  Connect to irc.efnet.net, with nick cat, name 'Majo nes', script /foo/bar:
    pycat irc.efnet.net cat efnet --realname='Majo Nes' --script=/foo/bar
  Use multiple fallbacks on IRCnet, nick cat, channel pycat
    pycat irc.ifi.uio.no,irc.hitos.no,irc.pvv.org:6668 cat '#pycat'
  Connect to localhost, listen on port 12345 on all interfaces:
    pycat localhost cat '#pycat' --listen=12345
  Connect to irc.freenode.net, listen on port 8000 on a specific interface:
    pycat irc.freenode.net cat '#pycat' --listen=example.com:8000

Options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -d, --debug           set log-level to debug
  -v, --version         display version
  --no-deop             prevent bot from deoping itself
  --listen=[addr]:port  address to bind listener to
  --realname=name       realname to provide to IRC server
  --script=path         script to send messages to

By default pyCAT will not listen or pass messages to any scripts. This functionality is strictly opt-in.

pycat irc.example.com pycat #pycat

Will start the bot without the listener or message parsing enabled. For more details on how to run pycat execute pycat --help.

Listen: To enable the listen feature start pycat with --listen address:port and the bot will listen for messages on the specified interface and port. Messages that start with /me or /notice will be converted to CTCP ACTIONs and NOTICE commands.

pycat server pycat #pycat --listen 12345 &
echo "Hello world" | nc localhost 12345

Will bind port 12345 on all interfaces. Sending messages can easily be achieved with netcat. Messages starting with @ or # will be interpreted as messages intended for the given nick or channel. If the user is not in the same channel as the bot the message will be discarded.

pycat server pycat #pycat --listen 12345 &
echo "@foo Hello foo" | nc 12345
echo "@foo,@bar,#pycat Hello all" | nc 12345

Script: Starting pycat with --script path instructs the bot to execute the file found at path with:

pycat $NICK $TARGET $SOURCE $MESSAGE

Any data written back to STDOUT will be sent to the same place the message originates from. Normally only messages that start with ! will be sent to the script. When the bot starts or when the script is modified it will be called with --config. The script should reply with key = value config settings. Currently only match = regexp is supported, this setting modifies which messages are sent to the script. For regexp matching $nick will be replaced with the current nick before running the check, use $$nick if you want the end expansion to be $nick. See example.sh for simple hello world script.

pyCAT is released under the MIT license, see COPYING.

There is no hiding the fact that this project is inspired by irccat (http://github.com/RJ/irccat).