Erwin

Erwin is a robot. Erwin does mean something: Emacs Robot Wtihin IRC Network. But just like we don't worry about each others names, you shouldn't worry about what Erwin's means. He has feelings you know. Well, he doesn't, but they are planned.

Erwin is a client server robot. An IRC client connects to any IRC server to listen for when he is needed. When he is needed he sends requests to an HTTP server. Of course, the HTTP server may be located in the cloud. Therefore Erwin is the beginning of SkyNet. We always said it would come from Emacs. Let's try not to piss him off.

Writing new functionality

To add functionality to Erwin, exterminating Sarah Connor for example, you need to write a web handler to implement the functionality and then register the URL for the functionality with the Erwin IRC client process.

The URL must return a JSON object for Erwin to understand it. The JSON object must include a key erwin which is the message for the Erwin IRC client to display back to the IRC channel or user. The erwin key string may include references to other keys in the JSON object. Here's an example of an Elnode service for Erwin:

(defun erwin-say-hello-service (httpcon)
   (elnode-send-json 
     httpcon 
     `(("erwin" . "hello ${name} you look ${compliment}")
       ("name" . ,(elnode-http-param httpcon "sender"))
       ("compliment" . "like sarah connor"))))

The erwin key in the alist shows the key reference system you can use.

You can also see that the erwin client passes variables to the HTTP service, the following variables are passed:

variable	meaning
sender	the person who was talking to Erwin on the IRC server
target	the way erwin was targetted

Other fields may be passed on the URL as with any other HTTP service.

Do not try to expand Erwin's conscious mind through the use of Java. That would be embarassing.

Registering new functionality

Erwin does not willy nilly accept extensions to his brain. He requires you to tell him about them. You must have control of the Emacs instance running Erwin's IRC client to do this.

(erwin/db-put 
  "^erwin[:, ] *insult \\(.*\\)"
  "http://localhost:8007/insult/?who=$1")

TODO

Erwin is being developed for TeamChat.net, here is what there is todo:

• make COMET URLs where Erwin will call the HTTP service on registration
  • this is so you can write Erwin handlers to poll services and have Erwin send unsolicited stuff into the channel
• make an IRC interface for registering Erwin handlers
• make an HTTP interface for registering Erwin handlers
• move the database of Erwin handlers to an Erwin handler
  • the IRC client should download the whole database on startup
  • and any changes should come back to Erwin's IRC client through a COMET service
• add the ability to call multiple handlers
  • if a handler fails, try another server, for example

Also note that this repo might have to split to reflect sensible packaging of the backends and frontends of erwin.