Best (easiest) way to crawl an IRC channel?
reddit / irc

----------------------------------------------------------------------
TryToTrackMeGoogle · 2022-06-09 17:36

What's up fellow boomers,

For one of my projects I'm saving all of the messages in an IRC
channel to a file. I don't own the server so I simply sign in with an
IRC client written in PHP and write the messages into a file with the
timestamp.

It works so I don't have to change anything but the client I use,
[Phergie](https://www.phergie.org), isn't maintained anymore even
though there are some rough edges so I'm looking into a more efficient
way to save all the messages.

Having to write my own script to do it seems redundant but when trying
to Google for answers I can't find any straightforward solutions even
though I expected more from the IRC community lol.

I found [Irssi](https://irssi.org) which apperantly has the capability
to do this but the configuration is more complex than I hoped. While
my experiments haven't concluded yet, is anybody aware of an easy to
use IRC client that I can use to crawl the messages in an IRC channel?

Happy chatting!

----------------------------------------------------------------------
EnthusiasmWinter4032 · 2022-06-09 19:06

Weechat does it by default. I assume Irssi does it by default too.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
4yolo8you · 2022-06-09 19:40

Nearly all IRC clients can log messages, all you need to do is have
one running 24/7 somewhere. Either on a local machine that you don’t
turn off (where you can run whatever GUI clients like mIRC or Hexchat)
or on your own remote machine (easiest to do with CLI clients like
Weechat or Irssi + screen or tmux) or using a remote commercial
service (IRCCloud). Once you have that, the configuration within the
client itself should be trivial (e.g. */set autolog on*). If you have
a limited remote server where you can run only web services like
PHP(?), then I don’t know of a solution offhand, but you may get more
answers if you explain your constraints more.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
LameBMX · 2022-06-09 19:58

Quassel core does it.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
bhius · 2022-06-09 20:19

> I found Irssi which apperantly has the capability to do this but the
configuration is more complex than I hoped.

The configuration may be simpler than you think...

1. starting irssi
2. typing "/set autolog on" and then "/save"
3. just crawling your favorite channels: irssi saving the messages
automatically

----------------------------------------------------------------------
schwiftshop · 2022-06-09 23:49

great suggestions elsewhere in the thread (any client will do this,
you just need to config, no scripting is required, the hard part is
keeping it running, not insurmountable)

But I think I'd use ZNC for this. It not only has a logging module
already, it has a few different scripting hosts you can use to write
your own modules to do whatever you want beyond just logging.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
renegadereplicant · 2022-06-10 10:09

well, most clients do that, too. Irssi has Perl scripting, WeeChat
Python/... scripting, …. Afaik, ZNC can only do C/compiled modules,
right ?

----------------------------------------------------------------------
zordtk · 2022-06-10 12:27

Yeah by default ZNC is C modules only. But there are modules for
Python, Perl, & TCL. Once you load one of those you can write scripts
in that language.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
schwiftshop · 2022-06-13 12:07

the big advantage of ZNC is it's always on - most clients need to be
monitored or poked to keep them going (maybe not weechat, it's a bit
of an odd duck that I haven't messed with too much). It's also hard to
check in to a running client but you can log into ZNC with any client
whenever you want to see what's going on.

But as the other response said, it's not just C++ (and it's C++),
there's support for python, perl, and TCL too - if OP can do PHP they
can figure out any of those