Jatter v1.2 - Interactive chat bot for Jabber

(c)2006 Andy Smith - andy.smith@netprojects.org.uk

Features
--------

* Reminder system
* RSS feed reader/subscription system
* Simple groupchat facility

Online help is available by doing '!help'. Still no
documentation - have a look at the source :)

0. Pre-requisites

Jatter comes with the following, which are required:-

* ADODb (http://adodb.sourceforge.net/)
- for database connectivity

* class.jabber.php (http://cjphp.netflint.net/)
- for the Jabber connection class. The version included has been
  modified slightly.

and the following which are optional:-

* lastRSS (http://lastrss.webdot.cz/)
- for RSS feed parsing

All are licensed under the LGPL or GPL and as such are included here.

1. Installation

i.   Unpack the archive and move to a place of your choosing.

ii.  Create a database and import contrib/jatter.sql into it.

iii. Edit config/conf.inc.php and change the Jabber/DB settings to suit.
     
     If the account you're using doesn't exist, Jatter will attempt
     to create one. If this is the case, it's worthwhile running
     Jatter with:-
     
	php ./jatter.php
     
     on the first run to make sure a connection is made.

vi.  Once running, please consider running !admin success. This will
     subscribe to a JID (jatter-success@jabber.netprojects.org.uk) so
     we can get an idea of Jatter's usage. Doing this will also allow
     jatter-success@jabber.netprojects.org.uk to see when your bot is
     online. If this is a problem for you, you should be able to remove
     authorisation from it by doing:-

     	!admin unauth jatter-success@jabber.netprojects.org.uk

2. Starting

Start the bot with './jatter start'.

To debug, change $jatter_debug to TRUE in config/conf.inc.php and start with

   php ./jatter.php

3. Stopping

Stop the bot with './jatter stop', or by sending '!admin halt'

4. Restarting

Restart the bot with './jatter restart', or by sending '!admin restart'

5. Known bugs

None that are known, but there's undoubtably some hiding away somewhere.

The MySQL schema (bot.sql) is taken from a MySQL 5.x installation and
may or may not work for you. It also has a table or two that isn't in
use.

Admin commands aren't displayed when you do '!help' - read
core/admin.inc.php if you want to know what they are.

If you subscribe to too many RSS feeds, or if any of the feeds are
particularly slow, it slows everything down (see 6. Todo, below).

In short, if it doesn't work for you, see the website. And if you're
not busy, feel free to help out with development!

6. Todo

* The RSS feed checker can slow Jatter down. It might be a good idea
to run something in parallel with the main Jatter process to do this.

* Improve the 'jatter' start script.
* Move the roster state array into the DB.
* grep -r TODO * ;)

6. Further info

See http://jatter.sourceforge.net/