Writing Your First Limnoria Plugin¶
Introduction¶
This page is a top-down guide on how to write new plugins for Limnoria.
Before you start, you should be more-or-less familiar with how to use and manage a Limnoria instance (loading plugins, configuring options, etc.). You should also install a copy of Limnoria on the machine you intend to develop plugins on, as it includes some additional scripts like supybot-plugin-create to generate the plugin skeleton.
We’ll go through this tutorial by actually writing a new plugin, named Random with just a few commands.
Generating the Plugin template¶
The recommended way to start writing a plugin is to use the
supybot-plugin-create wizard. You can run this from within your bot’s
plugins directory, or make a separate directory for all your own plugins and run
it there. (You can add additional plugin directories to your bot config using
config directories.plugins
). The latter approach is probably easier if you
intend to publish your code afterwards, as it keeps your code separate from any
other plugins you’ve installed.
Here’s an example session:
$ supybot-plugin-create
What should the name of the plugin be? Random
Sometimes you'll want a callback to be threaded. If its methods
(command or regexp-based, either one) will take a significant amount
of time to run, you'll want to thread them so they don't block the
entire bot.
Does your plugin need to be threaded? [y/n] n
What is your name, so I can fill in the copyright and license
appropriately? John Doe
Do you wish to use Supybot's license for your plugin? [y/n] y
Please provide a short description of the plugin: This plugin contains
commands relating to random numbers, including random sampling from a list
and a simple dice roller.
README.md¶
This is the README page people will see when they download your plugin or view it from a source control website. It’s helpful to include a brief summary of what the plugin does here, as well as list any third-party dependencies.
The supybot-plugin-create wizard should have already filled in the README with the summary you provided.
__init__.py¶
The next file we’ll look at is __init__.py
. If you’re not so familiar
with the Python import mechanism, think of it as sort of the “glue” file that
pulls all the files in the plugin directory together when you load it.
There are also a few administrative items here that can be queried from the bot,
such as the plugin’s author and contact info.
At the top of the file you’ll see the copyright header, with your name added as prompted in supybot-plugin-create. Feel free to use whatever license you choose: the default is the bot’s 3-clause BSD. For our example, we’ll leave it as is.
Here is a list of attributes you should usually look at:
__version__
: the plugin version. We’ll make ours “0.1”__author__
should be an instance of thesupybot.Author
class. This optionally includes a full name, a short name (usually IRC nick), and an e-mail address:__author__ = supybot.Author(name='Daniel DiPaolo', nick='Strike', email='somewhere@someplace.xxx')
__contributors__
is a dictionary mappingsupybot.Author
instances to lists of things they contributed. See e.g. in the Plugin plugin. For now we have no contributors, so we’ll leave it blank.__url__
references the download URL for the plugin. Since this is just an example, we’ll leave this blank.
The rest of __init__.py
shouldn’t be touched unless you are
using third-party modules in your plugin. If you are, then you need to add
additional import statements and reload
calls to all those modules, so that
they get reloaded with the rest of the plugin:
from . import config
from . import plugin
from importlib import reload
reload(plugin) # In case we're being reloaded.
# Add more reloads here if you add third-party modules and want them
# to be reloaded when this plugin is reloaded. Don't forget to
# import them as well!
config.py¶
config.py
is, unsurprisingly, where all the configuration stuff
related to your plugin goes. For this tutorial, the Random plugin is simple
enough that it doesn’t need any config variables, so this file can be left as
is.
To briefly outline this file’s structure: the configure
function is used by
the supybot-wizard wizard and allows users to configure the plugin
further if it’s present when the bot is first installed. (In practice though,
this is seldomly used by third-party plugins as they’re generally installed
after configuring the bot.)
The following line registers an entry for the plugin in Limnoria’s config registry, followed by any configuration groups and variable definitions:
Random = conf.registerPlugin('Random')
# This is where your configuration variables (if any) should go. For example:
# conf.registerGlobalValue(Random, 'someConfigVariableName',
# registry.Boolean(False, _("""Help for someConfigVariableName.""")))
Writing plugin configuration is explained in depth in the Advanced Plugin Config Tutorial.
plugin.py¶
plugin.py
includes the core code for the plugin. For most plugins this will
include command handlers, as well as anything else that’s relevant to its
particular use case (database queries,
HTTP server endpoints,
IRC command triggers, etc.)
As with any Python module, you’ll need to import any dependencies you want,
in addition to the standard supybot
imports included in the plugin
template:
import random
The bulk of the plugin definition then resides in a subclass of
callbacks.Plugin
. By convention, the class name is equal to the name of
the plugin, though this is not strictly required (the actual linkage is done by
the Class = Random
statement at the end of the file). It is helpful to fill
in the plugin docstring with some more details on how to actually use the plugin
too: this info can be shown on a live bot using the
plugin help <plugin name>
command.
class Random(callbacks.Plugin):
"""This plugin contains commands relating to random numbers, including random sampling from a list and a simple dice roller."""
def __init__(self, irc):
# Make sure to call the superclass' constructor when you define a custom one
super().__init__(irc)
self.rng = random.Random() # create our rng
self.rng.seed() # automatically seeds with current time
For this sample plugin, we define a custom constructor (__init__
) that
instantiates a random number generator instance and pre-seeds it. This isn’t
technically necessary for Python’s random
module, but it helps outline
how to write a similar constructor. Notice in particular how you must pass in
an irc
argument in addition to self
.
Warning
Because Limnoria is a multi-network bot, you should generally ignore
the irc
instance passed to the plugin constructor.
On a manual load
call to a live bot, this will be set to the network
the command was run on, but on bot startup, irc
will be (arbitrarily)
set to the first network that the bot decides to connect to.
Basic command handler¶
Our first command definition can immediately follow:
Note
All functions used as commands must have an all lowercase name.
A command function taking in no arguments from IRC will still require 4 arguments; they are as follows:
self
: refers to the class instance. It is common to keep local state for the plugin as instance variables within the plugin class.irc
: asupybot.callbacks.ReplyIrcProxy
instance; refers to the IRC network instance the command was called onmsg
: asupybot.ircmsgs.IrcMsg
instance; refers to the IRC message that triggered this command.args
: a raw list of remaining unconverted arguments; new plugins that use @wrap for automatic argument type conversion should never need to interact withargs
directly.
The function docstring is expected to be in a particular format. First, the very
first line dictates the argument list to be displayed when someone calls the
help
command on this command (i.e., help random
). Then, leave a blank
line and start the actual help string for the function. Don’t worry about the
fact that it’s tabbed in or anything like that, as the help command normalizes
it to make it look nice. This part should be fairly brief but sufficient to
explain the function and what (if any) arguments it requires. Remember that this
should fit in one IRC message which is typically around a 450 character limit.
The irc.reply
call
is a bit of magic: it issues a reply the same place as the message that
triggered the command. i.e. this may be in a channel or in a private
conversation with the bot.
Lastly, notice that commands go through the @wrap
decorator for automatic argument type conversion. For commands that require no
parameters, calling @wrap
with no arguments is enough.
Command handler with parameters¶
Now let’s create a command with some arguments and see how we use those in our
plugin commands. This seed
command lets the user pick a specific RNG seed:
For functions that use @wrap
(described further in the
Using commands.wrap tutorial), additional command arguments
are handled by:
- Adding type converters, one for each parameter,
to the list passed into
@wrap
- Adding one function parameter per argument to the command function
definition. (i.e.
def seed(self, irc, msg, args, seed)
instead ofdef seed(self, irc, msg, args)
)
We also modify the docstring to document this function. Note the syntax
on the first line: by convention, required arguments go in <>
and optional
arguments should be surrounded by []
.
The function body includes a new method
irc.replySuccess
.
This is just a generic “I succeeded” command which responds with whatever the
bot owner has configured in config supybot.replies.success
.
Also, by using @wrap
, we don’t need to do any type checking inside the
function itself - this is handled separately, and invalid argument values will
cause the command to error before it reaches the wrapped function.
With this alone you’d be able to make a range of useful plugin commands, but we’ll go include some more examples to illustrate common patterns.
Command handler with list-type arguments¶
The next sample command is named sample
(no pun intended): it takes a random
sample of arbitrary size from a list provided by the user:
The important thing to note is that list type arguments are rolled into one
parameter in the command function by the many
filter. Similar “multiplicity”
handlers are documented here.
We also update the docstring to use the []
convention when surrounding
optional arguments.
For this function’s body,
irc.error
is like
irc.replySuccess
but for error messages. We prefer using this instead of irc.reply
for error
signaling because its behaviour can be configured specially. For example, you
can force all errors to go in private by setting the reply.error.inPrivate
option, and this can help reduce noise on a busy channel.
Also, irc.error()
with no text will return a generic error message
configured in supybot.replies.error
, but this is not a valid call to
irc.reply
.
utils.str.commaAndify
is a simple helper that takes a list of strings
and turns it into “item1, item2, item3, item4, and item5” for an arbitrary
length. Limnoria has accumulated many such helpers in its lifetime, many of
which are described in the Using Utils page.
Command handler with optional arguments¶
Now for the last command that we will add to our plugin.py. This diceroll
command will allow the bot users to roll an arbitrary n-sided die, with n
defaulting to 6:
The only new thing described here is that irc.reply(..., action=True)
makes
the bot perform a /me. There are some other flags described in the
irc.reply
documentation too: common ones include private=True
, which
forces a private message, and notice=True
, which forces the reply to use
NOTICE instead of PRIVMSG.
test.py¶
The easy way to test any plugin would be to start up a bot, load the plugin, and run all the commands a few times to verify that they work. But this takes time, and as a project grows larger, starts to be a tedious and error-prone process…
This is where automated testing comes in. Limnoria has a test harness built upon the Python unittest library that abstracts away all the dependencies of live testing (i.e. the IRC client and server) and allows you to cover your entire plugin’s functionality within a few seconds.
How it works¶
Plugin test cases inherit from
supybot.test.PluginTestCase
or
supybot.test.ChannelPluginTestCase
and include
several methods to interact with a simulated
instance of the bot, in addition to the
standard assertion functions
provided by the unittest library.
Running the tests for a Limnoria plugin is done using the
supybot-test command: i.e. supybot-test /path/to/your/Plugin
The structure of these test classes, as well as interactions with features like Limnoria’s config system are described in detail in the Advanced Plugin Testing guide.
Functional testing examples¶
For a command where we don’t care about the exact output, the usual approach is to check that invocations raise or don’t raise an error. For a command that generates a purely random output, this applies too since we can’t predict what the result will be:
class RandomTestCase(PluginTestCase):
# This tuple determines which plugins to load in the test case
plugins = ('Random',)
def testRandom(self):
self.assertNotError('random')
# This throws, because the command doesn't expect any arguments
self.assertError('random abcdef')
However, this is less true if you pre-seed the RNG, as then you’re guaranteed
a repeatable result. The following snippet introduces
assertResponse(commandPlusArgs, expectedOutput)
, where commandPlusArgs
is the full bot command including arguments, all as one string:
Alternatively, you can use getMsg(command)
to fetch the output of a bot
command as a string and reuse it:
Another common practice is to use regular expressions to match the output of a command:
Note
The assertRegexp()
defined in Limnoria is not the same as
assertRegex()
from the standard unittest library. The latter
compares a regexp against a bare string, not the output of a bot command.
(For historical reasons, we have this confusing name.)
Conclusion¶
You are now well prepared to write Limnoria plugins. A few words of wisdom:
- Read other people’s plugins, especially the included plugins and ones by the core developers. We can’t possibly document all the things that Limnoria can do, though we try our best.
- Hack new functionality into existing plugins first if writing a new plugin is too daunting.
- Come ask us questions in #limnoria on Libera. Going back to the first point above, the developers themselves can help you even more than the docs can (though we prefer you read the docs first).
- Share your plugins with the world and make Limnoria all that more attractive for other users so they will want to write their plugins for Limnoria as well.
- And of course, have fun!