cerfbot is a chat bot built on the Hubot framework. It was initially generated by generator-hubot, and configured to be deployed on Heroku to get you up and running as quick as possible.
This README is intended to help get you started. Definitely update and improve to talk about your own instance, how to use and deploy, what functionality he has, etc!
You can test your hubot by running the following.
You can start cerfbot locally by running:
% bin/hubot
You'll see some start up output about where your scripts come from and a prompt:
[Sun, 04 Dec 2011 18:41:11 GMT] INFO Loading adapter shell
[Sun, 04 Dec 2011 18:41:11 GMT] INFO Loading scripts from /home/tomb/Development/hubot/scripts
[Sun, 04 Dec 2011 18:41:11 GMT] INFO Loading scripts from /home/tomb/Development/hubot/src/scripts
Hubot>
Then you can interact with cerfbot by typing cerfbot help
.
cerfbot> cerfbot help
cerfbot> animate me <query> - The same thing as `image me`, except adds a few
convert me <expression> to <units> - Convert expression to given units.
help - Displays all of the help commands that Hubot knows about.
...
An example script is included at scripts/example.coffee
, so check it out to
get started, along with the Scripting Guide.
For many common tasks, there's a good chance someone has already one to do just the thing.
There will inevitably be functionality that everyone will want. Instead of writing it yourself, you can check hubot-scripts for existing scripts.
To enable scripts from the hubot-scripts package, add the script name with
extension as a double quoted string to the hubot-scripts.json
file in this
repo.
Hubot is able to load scripts from third-party npm
package. Check the package's documentation, but in general it is:
- Add the packages as dependencies into your
package.json
npm install
to make sure those packages are installed- Add the package name to
external-scripts.json
as a double quoted string
You can review external-scripts.json
to see what is included by default.
If you are going to use the hubot-redis-brain
package
(strongly suggested), you will need to add the Redis to Go addon on Heroku which requires a verified
account or you can create an account at Redis to Go and manually
set the REDISTOGO_URL
variable.
% heroku config:add REDISTOGO_URL="..."
If you don't require any persistence feel free to remove the
hubot-redis-brain
from external-scripts.json
and you don't need to worry
about redis at all.
Adapters are the interface to the service you want your hubot to run on. This can be something like Campfire or IRC. There are a number of third party adapters that the community have contributed. Check Hubot Adapters for the available ones.
If you would like to run a non-Campfire or shell adapter you will need to add
the adapter package as a dependency to the package.json
file in the
dependencies
section.
Once you've added the dependency and run npm install
to install it you can
then run hubot with the adapter.
% bin/hubot -a <adapter>
Where <adapter>
is the name of your adapter without the hubot-
prefix.
% heroku create --stack cedar
% git push heroku master
If your Heroku account has been verified you can run the following to enable and add the Redis to Go addon to your app.
% heroku addons:add redistogo:nano
If you run into any problems, checkout Heroku's docs.
You'll need to edit the Procfile
to set the name of your hubot.
More detailed documentation can be found on the deploying hubot onto Heroku wiki page.
If you would like to deploy to either a UNIX operating system or Windows. Please check out the deploying hubot onto UNIX and deploying hubot onto Windows wiki pages.
If you are using the Campfire adapter you will need to set some environment variables. Refer to the documentation for other adapters and the configuraiton of those, links to the adapters can be found on Hubot Adapters.
Create a separate Campfire user for your bot and get their token from the web UI.
% heroku config:add HUBOT_CAMPFIRE_TOKEN="..."
Get the numeric IDs of the rooms you want the bot to join, comma delimited. If
you want the bot to connect to https://mysubdomain.campfirenow.com/room/42
and https://mysubdomain.campfirenow.com/room/1024
then you'd add it like this:
% heroku config:add HUBOT_CAMPFIRE_ROOMS="42,1024"
Add the subdomain hubot should connect to. If you web URL looks like
http://mysubdomain.campfirenow.com
then you'd add it like this:
% heroku config:add HUBOT_CAMPFIRE_ACCOUNT="mysubdomain"
You may want to get comfortable with heroku logs
and heroku restart
if you're having issues.