Lazynet News Bot

This document is probably outdated, check this page if something doesn't work, and for any new additions.

Introduction

Well, here is the promised documentation on usage of the news bot (News) on Lazynet. It's an infobot-like bot, written in Python by a couple of friends. As well as having infobot-like abilities, it also collects news and RSS feeds from various places. You can join #news for that stuff.

Public commands

Getting Online Help

The bot has fairly useful online help.

Just use help to get a list of all the available help topics.
use help topic to get a list of all the items in a help topic.
use help topic command to get help about a particular command in that help topic.

Factoids

The main job of an infobot, factoids. This is where you can set and retrieve random information in a few different ways. In some channels, the bot will pick up on things being said, even without being addressed. Also, in some channels, it can give the answer to a factoid lookup when not directly addresses. To reduce channel spammage, these commands also work via messages to the bot. Some commands require certain flags to be set on the bot, such as deleting and locking.

Setting a factoid - factoid is something
    use <null> to make the bot not reply to a request for this factoid
    use <reply> at the beginning of an entry to make the bot say just the factoid, and not the usual "factoid is something" reply
    use <action> at the beginning of an entry to make the bot say the factoid as an action, and not the usual "factoid is something" reply
Getting a factoid - factoid?
Adding to a factoid - factoid is also something else
Telling someone about a factoid - tell nickname about factoid
Forgetting a factoid - forget factoid
Changing a factoid - no, factoid is something else
factoid =~ s/old info/new info/ (uses regular expressions)
Locking a factoid - lock factoid
Unlocking a factoid - unlock factoid
Info on a factoid - factinfo factoid
Searching for a factoid - listkeys factoid (searches within factoid names)
listvalues something (searches within factoid values)

Karma

This is a fairly useless part of the bot, but fun. It's mainly used for showing approval or disapproval of things. A user can type either key++ or key-- to increment or decrement the key's karma respectively. To get the karma for a certain key, you would type karma key. A key without any current karma value will be listed as having neutral karma.

Currency exchange

This feature is much more useful. Instead of going to a page like The Universal Currency Converter, you can do it all via IRC. The main usage is exchange amount X to Y, where X and Y are the three letter codes for the currencies. For example, exchange 15 usd to cad to convert $15 American to Canadian. To look up the currency code and name, you can use currency something (either the three letter code, or part of the string describing it).

Calculator

The bot can perform mathematical calculations, using multiplication, division, addition, subtraction, exponentiation, and modulus. The character for exponent is ^ and the character for modulus is %. Parenthesis are also supported. Fractional exponents are supported (so square root can be performed with ^0.5).

Unit Conversion

Another useful feature, you can convert between various units. At the moment, you can convert temperature and distances. It works pretty much the same way as the currency exchange, but here's an example: convert amount X to Y, where X and Y are the units to convert from/to. The list of currently available units are:

c - degrees Celsius
f - degrees Fahrenheit
miles - miles
ft - feet
in - inches
km - kilometres
m - metres
cm - centimetres
mm - millimetres

Word stuff

Not a very descriptive heading, but this is for looking up words that rhyme, or their synonyms and antonyms. Or checking to see if a word is spelled correctly. Self-explanatory, I'd imagine.

spell word
rhyme word
synonyms word
antonyms word

News feeds

As mentioned above, this bot has news feed capabilities. It pulls news from Google News, and various other news and RSS feeds. Join #news to keep up with current events. There are a few informational commands for the news feeds it is currently using.

news string - search for any recent news matching string
listfeeds - show list of RSS feeds being checked
showfeed feedname - show information on the feedname RSS feed

MapQuest

The bot can lookup the approximate travel time and distance between any two points in the US or Canada on MapQuest.

mapquest source to destination - where source and destination are either City, State or a zip code.

Airline Info

The bot can gather info about flights, or air carriers. Obviously the info is only as accurate as the airlines provide.

airline name or code - look up the name for a carrier given the code, or lookup the code for a carrier given a (partial) name
flight code flight-number date - Look up the details of the specified flight. Date is in YYYY-MM-DD format, and is optional. If ommitted, the bot will use today's date.

Sports Results

Search for results from recent games in any of NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL.

score league team - Search for the results in the specified league for a recent match involving the specified team.

Weather

After much prodding and poking, the bot can finally do weather lookups. For places in the US, you'll need the city name, and the state (abbreviation). For other countries, the city name and country will do.

weather city, state - for lookups in the US
weather city, country - for lookups outside of the US

Other stuff

For the news part of the bot, I made a simple search engine to find headlines from recent news articles found by the bot (which isn't really useful now, since the bot has built-in news searching)

This document will be updated as needed, because the bot is still in development.