#libPurple core-answerscripts plugin

• Most hackable pidgin plugin!
• Framework for hooking scripts to respond received messages (and maybe bit more in future) for various libpurple clients such as pidgin or finch
• This simple plugin just passes every single message received by any libPurple-based client (pidgin,finch) to script(s) in user's home directory... So you can add various hooks.
• There are already few sample (answer)scripts in ./purple directory, so you can check how easy it is to write some script for pidgin or finch...

##What can this do for me?

There are lot of hacks that you can do with this simple framework if you know some basic scripting. eg.:

• Map any response to any incomming message (You can even use some substitutions and regexes)
• Forward your instant messages to email, SMS gateway, text-to-speech (eg. espeak) or something...
• Remote control your music player (or anything else on your computer) using instant messages
• Simple IRC/Jabber/ICQ/XMPP/Facebook bot (you can run finch in headless screen on server)
• Providing some service (Searching web, Weather info, System status, RPG game...)
• BackDoor (even unintentional one - you've been warned)
• Loging and analyzing messages
• Connect IM with Arduino
• Annoy everyone with spam (and probably get banned everywhere)
• Anything else that you can imagine... (i'm looking forward to hearing your stories)

##Writing own (answer)scripts

• Check example scripts in ./purple/answerscripts.d/ to see how easy it is
• Basically
  • Each time you receive message, the main answerscripts.sh script (answerscripts.exe on M$ Windows) is executed on background
  • Every line that is outputed by this script to it's STDOUT is sent as response to message that executed it
  • Following environment values are passed to the script (ANSW_L = local user, ANSW_R = remote user = your buddy who sent the message):
    • ANSW_ACTION (what happend: IM/CHAT/UNKNOWN, show setting dialog, event, etc...)
    • ANSW_MSG (text of the message)
    • ANSW_MSG_HIGHLIGHTED (was my nick mentioned in message? true/false)
    • ANSW_PROTOCOL (protocol used to deliver the message. eg.: xmpp, irc,...)
    • ANSW_R_NAME (ID of remote user - "buddy")
    • ANSW_R_GROUP (group which contains that buddy OR empty string)
    • ANSW_R_ALIAS (buddy's OPTIONAL alias, server alias, contact alias, username OR empty string)
    • ANSW_R_STATUS (unique ID of remote user's status. eg.: available, away,...)
    • ANSW_R_ROOM_NAME (Chatroom name)
    • ANSW_R_STATUS_MSG (status message set by your buddy)
    • ANSW_L_NAME (ID of local user)
    • ANSW_L_ALIAS (OPTIONAL alias of local user OR empty string)
    • ANSW_L_STATUS (unique ID of local user's status. eg.: available, away,...)
    • ANSW_L_STATUS_MSG (status message set by local user)
    • ANSW_L_AGENT (ID of IM client used with answerscripts)
    • ANSW_L_AGENT_VERSION (Version of client)
  • WARNING: You should mind security (don't let attackers to execute their messages/nicks!)
  • I guess that you will want to use more than one answerscript, so i made such answerscript which will execute all answerscripts in ~/.purple/answerscripts.d
    • It's quite smart and all you need to do is set the filenames and permissions of answerscripts in that directory properly...
    • See it's (./purple/answerscripts.sh) comments for rest of documentation...

###Example Following answerscript will reply to each incoming private message if you are not available. Reply will consist of two messages: one with username of your buddy who sent you a message and text of that message; and second with your status message. Simple huh?

#!/bin/sh
[ "$ANSW_ACTION" = 'IM' ] && [ "$ANSW_L_STATUS" != 'available' ] && {
	echo "<$ANSW_R_NAME> $ANSW_MSG"
	echo "My status: $ANSW_L_STATUS_MSG";
}

##Building & installation

###From packages

• ArchLinux: http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=37942

###Manually

• The libpurple header files are needed to compile the plugin.

• To build and install : You can compile the plugin using

    $ make
  

  and install it with

    $ make install
  

  This will install it in ~/.purple/plugins so that only the user who install it can use it.

    $ make user
  

  Install main script and sample answerscripts to ~/.purple/answerscripts.d/

• To install it for everybody on your computer,

    $ make
    $ su
    # make install PREFIX="/path/to/libpurple" (this command as root user)
  

  generally /path/to/libpurple is /usr or /usr/local. If you don't know the path then you can find out using

    $ whereis libpurple
  

  and look for the part before "/lib/libpurple.so".