You will need node.js and npm. Joyent has an excellent blog post on how to get those installed, so we'll omit those details here.
Once node and npm are ready, we can install the hubot generator:
% npm install -g yo generator-hubot
This will give us the hubot
yeoman generator. Now we
can make a new directory, and generate a new instance of hubot in it. For example, if
we wanted to make a bot called bender:
% mkdir myhubot
% cd myhubot
% yo hubot
At this point, you'll be asked a few questions about who is creating the bot, and which adapter you'll be using. Adapters are hubot's way of integrating with different chat providers.
If you are using git, the generated directory includes a .gitignore, so you can initialize and add everything:
% git init
% git add .
% git commit -m "Initial commit"
You now have your own functional hubot! There's a bin/hubot
command for convenience, to handle installing npm dependencies, loading scripts,
and then launching your hubot.
% bin/hubot
Hubot>
This starts hubot using the shell adapter, which
is mostly useful for development. Make note of Hubot>
; this is the name he'll
respond
to with commands. For example, to list available commands:
% bin/hubot
Hubot> hubot: help
hubot <keyword> tweet - Returns a link to a tweet about <keyword>
hubot <user> is a badass guitarist - assign a role to a user
hubot <user> is not a badass guitarist - remove a role from a user
hubot animate me <query> - The same thing as `image me`, except adds a few parameters to try to return an animated GIF instead.
hubot convert me <expression> to <units> - Convert expression to given units.
hubot die - End hubot process
hubot echo <text> - Reply back with <text>
hubot fake event <event> - Triggers the <event> event for debugging reasons
hubot help - Displays all of the help commands that Hubot knows about.
hubot help <query> - Displays all help commands that match <query>.
hubot image me <query> - The Original. Queries Google Images for <query> and returns a random top result.
hubot map me <query> - Returns a map view of the area returned by `query`.
hubot mustache me <query> - Searches Google Images for the specified query and mustaches it.
hubot mustache me <url> - Adds a mustache to the specified URL.
hubot ping - Reply with pong
hubot show storage - Display the contents that are persisted in the brain
hubot show users - Display all users that hubot knows about
hubot the rules - Make sure hubot still knows the rules.
hubot time - Reply with current time
hubot translate me <phrase> - Searches for a translation for the <phrase> and then prints that bad boy out.
hubot translate me from <source> into <target> <phrase> - Translates <phrase> from <source> into <target>. Both <source> and <target> are optional
hubot who is <user> - see what roles a user has
hubot youtube me <query> - Searches YouTube for the query and returns the video embed link.
hubot pug bomb N - get N pugs
hubot pug me - Receive a pug
hubot ship it - Display a motivation squirrel
You almost definitely will want to change his name to give him some more character. bin/hubot takes a --name
:
% bin/hubot --name myhubot
myhubot>
Your hubot will now respond as myhubot
. This is
case-insensitive, and can be prefixed with @
or suffixed with :
. These are equivalent:
MYHUBOT help
myhubot help
@myhubot help
myhubot: help
Hubot's power comes through scripting. Read docs/scripting.md for the deal on bending hubot to your will using code.
There are many community-contributed scripts available through hubot-scripts. To use scripts from it:
- Make sure
hubot-scripts
is listed as a dependency inpackage.json
(it should by default) - Update
hubot-scripts.json
to include the script you want in the list. Make sure the file is still valid JSON! - Review the script to see if there's dependencies or configuration to add
In addition, there are scripts released as npm packages. If you find one you want to use:
- Add the package to the list of
dependencies
into yourpackage.json
npm install
to make sure its installed
To enable third-party scripts that you've added you will need to add the package
name as a double quoted string to the external-scripts.json
file in this repo.
Please note that external scripts may become the default for hubot scripts in future releases.
Hubot uses the adapter pattern to support multiple chat-backends. Read available adapters in docs/adapters.md, along with how to configure them.
You can deploy hubot to Heroku, which is the officially supported method. Additionally you are able to deploy hubot to a UNIX-like system or Windows. Please note the support for deploying to Windows isn't officially supported.
Using custom scripts, you can quickly customize Hubot to be the most life embettering robot he can be. Read docs/patterns.md for some nifty tricks that may come in handy as you teach him new skills.