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Full-featured Python IRC library for Python.

- `Project home <https://github.com/jaraco/irc>`_
- `Docs <https://python-irc.readthedocs.io/>`_
- `History <https://python-irc.readthedocs.io/en/latest/history.html>`_

Overview
========

This library provides a low-level implementation of the IRC protocol for
Python.  It provides an event-driven IRC client framework.  It has
a fairly thorough support for the basic IRC protocol, CTCP, and DCC
connections.

In order to understand how to make an IRC client, it's best to read up first
on the `IRC specifications
<http://web.archive.org/web/20160628193730/http://www.irchelp.org/irchelp/rfc/>`_.

Client Features
===============

The main features of the IRC client framework are:

* Abstraction of the IRC protocol.
* Handles multiple simultaneous IRC server connections.
* Handles server PONGing transparently.
* Messages to the IRC server are done by calling methods on an IRC
  connection object.
* Messages from an IRC server triggers events, which can be caught
  by event handlers.
* Multiple options for reading from and writing to an IRC server:
  you can use sockets in an internal ``select()`` loop OR use
  Python3's asyncio event loop
* Functions can be registered to execute at specified times by the
  event-loop.
* Decodes CTCP tagging correctly (hopefully); I haven't seen any
  other IRC client implementation that handles the CTCP
  specification subtleties.
* A kind of simple, single-server, object-oriented IRC client class
  that dispatches events to instance methods is included.
* DCC connection support.

Current limitations:

* The IRC protocol shines through the abstraction a bit too much.
* Data is not written asynchronously to the server (and DCC peers),
  i.e. the ``write()`` may block if the TCP buffers are stuffed.
* Like most projects, documentation is lacking ...
* DCC is not currently implemented in the asyncio-based version

Unfortunately, this library isn't as well-documented as I would like
it to be.  I think the best way to get started is to read and
understand the example program ``irccat``, which is included in the
distribution.

The following modules might be of interest:

* ``irc.client``

  The library itself.  Read the code along with comments and
  docstrings to get a grip of what it does.  Use it at your own risk
  and read the source, Luke!

* ``irc.client_aio``

  All the functionality of the above library, but utilizing
  Python 3's native asyncio library for the core event loop.
  Interface/API is otherwise functionally identical to the classes
  in ``irc.client``

* ``irc.bot``

  An IRC bot implementation.

* ``irc.server``

  A basic IRC server implementation. Suitable for testing, but not
  intended as a production service.

  Invoke the server with ``python -m irc.server``.

Examples
========

Example scripts in the scripts directory:

* ``irccat``

  A simple example of how to use the IRC client.  ``irccat`` reads
  text from stdin and writes it to a specified user or channel on
  an IRC server.

* ``irccat2``

  The same as above, but using the ``SimpleIRCClient`` class.

* ``aio_irccat``

  Same as above, but uses the asyncio-based event loop in
  ``AioReactor`` instead of the ``select()`` based ``Reactor``.


* ``aio_irccat2``

  Same as above, but using the ``AioSimpleIRCClient`` class


* ``servermap``

  Another simple example.  ``servermap`` connects to an IRC server,
  finds out what other IRC servers there are in the net and prints
  a tree-like map of their interconnections.

* ``testbot``

  An example bot that uses the ``SingleServerIRCBot`` class from
  ``irc.bot``.  The bot enters a channel and listens for commands in
  private messages or channel traffic.  It also accepts DCC
  invitations and echos back sent DCC chat messages.

* ``dccreceive``

  Receives a file over DCC.

* ``dccsend``

  Sends a file over DCC.


NOTE: If you're running one of the examples on a unix command line, you need
to escape the ``#`` symbol in the channel. For example, use ``\\#test`` or
``"#test"`` instead of ``#test``.


Scheduling Events
=================

The library includes a default event Scheduler as
``irc.schedule.DefaultScheduler``,
but this scheduler can be replaced with any other scheduler. For example,
to use the `schedule <https://pypi.org/project/schedule>`_ package,
include it
in your dependencies and install it into the IRC library as so:

    class ScheduleScheduler(irc.schedule.IScheduler):
        def execute_every(self, period, func):
            schedule.every(period).do(func)

        def execute_at(self, when, func):
            schedule.at(when).do(func)

        def execute_after(self, delay, func):
            raise NotImplementedError("Not supported")

        def run_pending(self):
            schedule.run_pending()

    irc.client.Reactor.scheduler_class = ScheduleScheduler


Decoding Input
==============

By default, the IRC library attempts to decode all incoming streams as
UTF-8, even though the IRC spec stipulates that no specific encoding can be
expected. Since assuming UTF-8 is not reasonable in the general case, the IRC
library provides options to customize decoding of input by customizing the
``ServerConnection`` class. The ``buffer_class`` attribute on the
``ServerConnection`` determines which class is used for buffering lines from the
input stream, using the ``buffer`` module in `jaraco.stream
<https://pypi.python.org/pypi/jaraco.stream>`_. By default it is
``buffer.DecodingLineBuffer``, but may be
re-assigned with another class, following the interface of ``buffer.LineBuffer``.
The ``buffer_class`` attribute may be assigned for all instances of
``ServerConnection`` by overriding the class attribute.

For example:

.. code:: python

    from jaraco.stream import buffer

    irc.client.ServerConnection.buffer_class = buffer.LenientDecodingLineBuffer

The ``LenientDecodingLineBuffer`` attempts UTF-8 but falls back to latin-1, which
will avoid ``UnicodeDecodeError`` in all cases (but may produce unexpected
behavior if an IRC user is using another encoding).

The buffer may be overridden on a per-instance basis (as long as it's
overridden before the connection is established):

.. code:: python

    server = irc.client.Reactor().server()
    server.buffer_class = buffer.LenientDecodingLineBuffer
    server.connect()

Alternatively, some clients may still want to decode the input using a
different encoding. To decode all input as latin-1 (which decodes any input),
use the following:

.. code:: python

    irc.client.ServerConnection.buffer_class.encoding = "latin-1"

Or decode to UTF-8, but use a replacement character for unrecognized byte
sequences:

.. code:: python

    irc.client.ServerConnection.buffer_class.errors = "replace"

Or, to simply ignore all input that cannot be decoded:

.. code:: python

    class IgnoreErrorsBuffer(buffer.DecodingLineBuffer):
        def handle_exception(self):
            pass


    irc.client.ServerConnection.buffer_class = IgnoreErrorsBuffer

The library requires text for message
processing, so a decoding buffer must be used. Clients
must use one of the above techniques for decoding input to text.

Notes and Contact Info
======================

Enjoy.

Maintainer:
Jason R. Coombs <jaraco@jaraco.com>

Original Author:
Joel Rosdahl <joel@rosdahl.net>

Copyright © 1999-2002 Joel Rosdahl
Copyright © 2011-2016 Jason R. Coombs
Copyright © 2009 Ferry Boender

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