Creating an IRC bot in PHP from scratch

By alex|PHP, Programming, Web-related|7 Comments

I came across several articles about this topic, and I decided to take a look at it, combine them, and actually have the bot work.

The way this bot works is it will open up a server, join an IRC chat channel and post a message, going into idle status after that, waiting to receive a ping in response. If you don't want to wait, once the message is posted you can cancel page loading and enter the page again (Not reload it, since that would send the message again), and you would have the message posted.
A good use for this bot (Although not recommended because of the high traffic) would be to send messages to hundreds of different IRC channels, or to have the program refresh the page every minute or so and send a message to certain IRC channels every x time.

We will create a new file, named "irc_bot.php" with the following function:

 
< ?php
function writeIRC($msg){
	// define your variables
	$host = "irc.dal.net";
	$port=6666;
	$nick="demoTester";
	$ident="DemoTester";
	$chan="#frih";
	$readbuffer="";
	$realname = "Demo Tester";
 
	// open a socket connection to the IRC server
	$fp = fsockopen($host, $port, $erno, $errstr, 30);
 
	// print the error if ther eis no connection
	if (!$fp) {
		echo $errstr." (".$errno.")\n";
	} else {
		// write data through the socket to join the channel
		fwrite($fp, "NICK ".$nick."\r\n");
		fwrite($fp, "USER ".$ident." ".$host." bla :".$realname."\r\n");
		fwrite($fp, "JOIN :".$chan."\r\n");
 
		// write data through the socket to print text to the channel
		fwrite($fp, "PRIVMSG ".$chan." :$msg\r\n");
 
		$timep = 0; //set up timer
		$timep = round(microtime(), 3); //start microtime
		// loop through each line to look for ping
		 while (!feof($fp)) {
 
			$line =  fgets($fp, 128);
			echo $line."\n";
 
			$line = explode(":ping ", $line);
 
			echo $line[0]."\n";
 
			if ($line[1]) {
 
				fwrite($fp, "PONG ".$line[1]."\r\n");
			}
			$time2 = round(microtime(), 3); //set up second timer
			$gen = $time2 - $timep; //find the difference
			if($gen > 30){
				//timeout - break loop
				echo '
 
Operation finished without receiving ping. Check out the stats iframe to see your message.
 
';
				break;
			}
		}
 
		fclose($fp);
	}
}
?>

Using it:

So now you should join a channel in the server you like, for this example I will be using one of frihost.com's IRC channels (Server: irc.dal.net Channel: #frih)

The way you would use this bot would be to send messages every set period of time for example, with loop functions, or to manage IRC channels, if you leave the last loop of code and you examine every single line posted on the channel.
You could also use it to warn users, or to post to several channels at the same time... The uses are varied, and here you have a base code to start from...

Have fun, and if you use it, post a link in the comments and I'll include it here in the article, as examples of usage.

Example of Bot working

Well I have created a simple page that will use POST to send data to the IRC server, and then I included the channel stats in an iframe below, so you can see the results live... It's pretty cool, so try it, and if you wonder how it is done download the demo page.

1. Go to demo page
2. Download demo page (3kb)

For any questions/suggestions please comment