Squadbot

Squadbot is an amazingly flexible API to connect bots to protocols using a plugin and protocol API structure, fully written in node!

What is Squadbot?

Squadbot is an advanced plugin API written for chat bots. With the ability to write your own protocols and plugins, you can fairly easily augment the bot in whatever way best suits you. And if you aren't a programmer, Squadbot is a piece of cake to install and set up. With our own package manager (soon to be introduced), you can add different protocols and plugins with a single command. But the core of Squadbot can be used for much more than only chat bots. We are working on a secure plugin system so that with slight modifications, Squadbot can be used for everything that requires plugin management. There have been ideas popping up in the team about a Siri-like home assistant, and even a flexible home security system that could be made possible with small modifications to the protocol. For any questions, feel free to e-mail us at abitofsquad@nickforall.nl and we will be happy to answer all your questions. Happy Coding!

Settings.json

Squadbot requires a settings.json file in its root directory (the same as index.js) in order to work. The object within the file must have the following properties in order for the bot to work:

{
    "debug" : true,
    "max_event_listeners" : 250,
    "plugin_folder" : "plugins",

    "spm": {
        "host": "localhost",
        "port": 4575,
        "enabled": true
    }
}

NB: Protocols also have their own settings, these will be downloaded when installing a new protocol!

Plugins

Squadbot plugins are very easy to write. Below is small yet rather advanced example which uses the event-driven plugins API provided:

exports.plugin = {
    "name": "Count",
    "description": "Responds to 'squadbot' and 'batman' and implements a count command which counts from x to y.",
    "authors": {
        "Daniel Mizrachi": "Creator"
    },
    "reservedCommands": ["count"],
    "collaborators": {
        "Nick Vernij": "Made the older versions (except not really)"
    },
    "version": "0.3"
};

bot.on("message", function(msg, sender) {
    msg = msg.toLowerCase();
    if(msg === "squadbot") {
        bot.send("You called?");
    } else if(msg === "batman") {
        bot.send("You called for Batman but I'm the next best thing!");
    }
});

bot.on("command", function(cmd, args, sender) {
    if(cmd === "count" && args.length === 2) {
        if(args[0] < args[1]) {
            for(var i = parseInt(args[0])-1; i < parseInt(args[1]); i++) {
                bot.send(i+1);
            }
        } else {
            for(var i = parseInt(args[0])+1; i > parseInt(args[1]); i--){
                bot.send(i-1);
            }
        }
    }
});

Heads Up! Significant changes are being made in this early stage of development, plugins are most likely to break sooner or later.

A better documentation for this API is to be written. For now, if you want some more complex examples, feel free to take a look in the /plugins directory in this repo. Every .js file placed in here which defines a valid exports.plugin object is automatically loaded by Squadbot upon initialisation.

Contributing

Feel free to contribute, however significant API changes have a chance of not being accepted, since we like to design the API with our full team. If you've written a plugin for Squadbot, awesome! However public contributions are not directly accepted in this repository, but please make a pull request as a proposal for what you want to implement, if the team agrees with it, you'll be able to code it, and the team will be helping you as much as they can! We're interested to see what people might come up with, even at such an early stage in development. An npm-like SPM* is currently being developed, but this will take a while to get into production. For now, we're focused on other things and at some point will compile a list somewhere of available plugins and their associative protocols. Speaking of which...

Cross Protocol

Yes, you heard it, Squadbot will be Cross Protocol Compatible, and guess what, you'll be able to use a simple Protocols API to develop your own! That's what sets this project apart from others. We are planning on releasing protocols for the following platforms ourselves:

• Kik
• Skype
• IRC
• Telegram We look forward to seeing which other platforms protocols are written for. If you have any ideas right now, please do send us a message, as this API won't be working for a while.

Emojis

Emojis work the same way as on GitHub, just add :name_of_emoji: to a string and Squadbot will replace it with an emoji. Go to emoji-cheat-sheet.com to see all the available emojis and their names.

* 'Squadbot Package Manager' (akin to the familiar 'Node Package Manager'). How exciting!

Built With

• javascript
• node.js