======================= VB.NET IRC Client ======================= by Jakash3 March 05, 2010 After building my first irc bot, I wish to make a tutorial on making a program to: connect to an irc server, join a channel, and send and receive channel comments. The process involves creating a socket and using it to connect to the server. Once connected, it will send and receive messages from the server which it will parse and output to the screen. Before we start this tutorial, I assume that you know the common irc commands and you have been in an irc chat before, and also that you VB.NET. We will be making a VB.NET Console Application. In the source code we will first need to define the essential variables that will hold data for bot to use and act upon, including a variable for the socket object: --------------------------------------- Dim sock As System.Net.Sockets.Socket Dim ircserver As String Dim port As Integer Dim Channel As String Dim nick As String 'The following objects are for manipulating the console IN and OUT streams Dim cout As System.IO.TextWriter = Console.Out Dim cin As System.IO.TextReader = Console.In --------------------------------------- Next, we will prompt the user to enter in information for these variables in order to specify the irc server, port, and channel to connect to as well as their nick name to use. --------------------------------------- Sub Main() cout.WriteLine("My IRC Bot") cout.Write(vbNewLine) cout.Write("Server name: ") ircserver = cin.ReadLine cout.Write("Port number: ") port = cin.ReadLine cout.Write("Channel: ") channel = cin.ReadLine cout.Write("Nickname: ") nick = cin.ReadLine --------------------------------------- Now we initialize and connect the socket: --------------------------------------- Dim ipHostInfo As System.Net.IPHostEntry = System.Net.Dns.GetHostEntry(ircserver) Dim EP As New System.Net.IPEndPoint(ipHostInfo.AddressList(0), port) sock = New System.Net.Sockets.Socket(EP.Address.AddressFamily, Net.Sockets.SocketType.Stream, Net.Sockets.ProtocolType.Tcp) sock.Connect(ircserver, port) --------------------------------------- Once we connect to an irc server with a socket, it is a rule that you send at least the NICK and USER commands to the server. This is where you register and identify yourself as a new user, after that I will give myself a nickname and set my mode status to +B which means Bot: --------------------------------------- send("NICK " & nick) send("USER " & nick & " 0 * :REALNAMEHERE") send("JOIN " & channel) send("MODE " & nick & " +B") --------------------------------------- These lines of code will use the send() Sub-procedure to send data to the server. Here.s what that Sub looks like: --------------------------------------- Sub send(ByVal msg As String) msg &= vbCr & vbLf Dim data() As Byte = System.Text.ASCIIEncoding.UTF8.GetBytes(msg) sock.send(data, msg.length, socketflags.none) End Sub --------------------------------------- The send sub will first take the argument and append a carriage return and linefeed at the end of the string because irc servers separate each message sent to it by CrLf. Then it will chop that string into a byte array filled with each character of that string and use that as an argument to the send method for the socket to send that data to the server. Next we will make a loop to have the socket query to receive data from the server for as long as the socket is still connected: --------------------------------------- While sock.connected = True Dim mail As String = recv() cout.WriteLine(mail) End While --------------------------------------- recv() function will receive a packet of 4096 bytes in length from the server as seen here: --------------------------------------- Function recv() As String Dim data(4096) As Byte sock.Receive(data, 4096, SocketFlags.None) Dim mail As String = System.Text.ASCIIEncoding.UTF8.GetString(data) If mail.Contains(" ") Then If mail.Substring(0, 4) = "PING" Then Dim pserv As String = mail.Substring(mail.IndexOf(":"), mail.Length - mail.IndexOf(":")) pserv = pserv.TrimEnd(Chr(0)) mail = "PING from " & pserv & vbNewLine & "PONG to " & pserv send("PONG " & pserv) ElseIf mail.Substring(mail.IndexOf(" ") + 1, 7) = "PRIVMSG" Then Dim tmparr() As String = Nothing mail = mail.Remove(0, 1) tmparr = mail.Split("!") rnick = tmparr(0) tmparr = mail.Split(":") rmsg = tmparr(1) mail = "msg: " & rnick & ">" & rmsg End If End If mail = mail.TrimEnd(Chr(0)) mail = mail.Remove(mail.LastIndexOf(vbLf), 1) mail = mail.Remove(mail.LastIndexOf(vbCr), 1) Return mail End Function --------------------------------------- Now when it receives data from the server the messages we care about the most are the ones that show up on an irc client and the ping requests from the server to check if the client (us) is still active and online. When the server sends a ping request, then we must send a pong message back. When a ping request is sent from a irc server it comes in this format: --------------------------------------- PING :sender --------------------------------------- Where sender is the name of the server who sent the ping request. If a client gets this message from the server then it must reply back with this message: --------------------------------------- PONG :receiver --------------------------------------- Where receiver is the name of the server to send the pong reply back to. Well that.s part of what the function does after receiving the packet from the server and converting it to a string. It first analyzes the packet first to see if it.s a ping request and sends a pong reply back to the sender (which is found by extracting the name of the server from the ping message) if it is. Another common type of message that the server sends is the PRIVMSG message. Which means that a user made a comment either to the channel on irc or to you as a private message. The syntax is: --------------------------------------- :nick!realname PRIVMSG receiver :msg --------------------------------------- Where nick is the nickname of the user sending the message, realname is the realname or addresss of that user, receiver is the name of another user or a channel to send the message to, and msg is the message to send. If the receiver is a channel, then all users will see that message; Otherwise only the user of the username specified on this message will receive that msg. What makes it easier for programs is that the nick and realname are separated by ! and the message is prefixed with :. Well after all that, if for some reason the While loop breaks and the socket is disconnected, then it will issue the socket.close method and Return from the main sub. Now since we already know how to send and receive messages to irc servers now you can make you own irc client or bot to process those messages and make replies. To send a message just use the PRIVMSG command: --------------------------------------- PRIVMSG receiver :msg --------------------------------------- receiver could be the name of a user or a channel. Remember to prefix the channel with # For more commands on the irc client protocol read this: http://www.mirc.com/help/rfc2812.txt