Introduction

Hangupsbot is a chat bot designed for working with Google Hangouts.

Please see:

• Instructions for installing
• Issue tracker for bugs, issues and feature requests
• Wiki for everything else

Repository Links

• Translation Project
• Reference Hangups Library

Features

• Mentions : If somebody mentions you in a room, receive a private hangout from the bot with details on the mention, including context, room and person who mentioned you.
• Syncouts : A syncout is two Hangout group chats that have their messages forwarded to each other, allowing seamless interaction between the two rooms. Primarily used to beat the 150-member chat limit, but it can also be used for temporarily connecting teams together to interact.
• Cross-chat Syncouts : Half of your team is on Slack? No problem! You can connect them into the same room to communicate. Checkout telesync for using Telegram with the hangoutsbot.
• Hubot Integration: Hangupsbot allows you to connect to Hubot, instantly providing you access to hundreds of developed chat tools and plugins.
• Plugins and sinks : The bot has instructions for developing your own plugins and sinks, allowing the bot to interact with external services such as your company website, Google scripts and much more.
• Plugin mania : games, nickname support, subscribed keywords, customizable API - the list goes on!

Running The Bot

Note: First run? See the installation instructions

run /path/to/venv/bin/hangupsbot with these optional arguments:

usage: hangupsbot [-h] [-d] [-s] [--base_dir BASE_DIR] [--log LOG]
                  [--cookies COOKIES] [--memory MEMORY] [--config CONFIG]
                  [--retries RETRIES] [--version]

optional arguments:
  -h, --help           show this help message and exit
  -d, --debug          log detailed debugging messages
                       (default: False)
  -s, --service        strip the timestamp from the stdout-log
                       (default: False)
  --base_dir BASE_DIR  base dir for the log-, cookies-, config- and memory-path
                       (default: ~/.local/share/hangupsbot)
  --log LOG            log file path
                       (default: ~/.local/share/hangupsbot/hangupsbot.log)
  --cookies COOKIES    cookie storage path
                       (default: ~/.local/share/hangupsbot/cookies.json)
  --memory MEMORY      memory storage path
                       (default: ~/.local/share/hangupsbot/memory.json)
  --config CONFIG      config storage path
                       (default: ~/.local/share/hangupsbot/config.json)
  --retries RETRIES    Maximum disconnect / reconnect retries before quitting
                       (default: 5)
  --version            show program's version number and exit

Example: /opt/venv/bin/hangupsbot --cookies ~/mybot/cookies.secret

Bot Configuration for Administrators

Configuration directives can be specified in config.json.

Please note that the config.json file supplied with the repository is not supposed to be edited/changed. It is the reference file used by the bot to create the actual configuration file located elsewhere in the system. To find out where the actual file is, please see the Additional Configuration section in the installation instructions.

Most configuration directives are specified globally

• Global directives are always specified in the "root" of config.json.
• To specify a per-conversation directive, the same configuration option should be defined as config.conversations[<conversation-id>].<configuration option>.
• Per-conversation directives override global settings, if both are set.

Plugins

The plugins key in config.json allows you to optionally specify a list of plugins that will be loaded by the bot on startup. If this option is left as null, then all available plugins will be loaded.

To specify the plugins to be loaded, first ensure that the correct .py files are inside your hangupsbot/plugin/ directory, then modify the plugins key in config.json to reflect which plugins/files you want to load e.g. plugins: ["mentions", "default", "chance", "syncrooms"]

Some plugins may require extra configuration. config.json is the the configuration provider for the bot and its plugins.

Some interesting plugins:

• mentions plugin
  • alert users when their names are mentioned in a chat
• subscribe plugin
  • alert users when keywords they are subscribed to are said in a chat
• syncout / syncrooms plugins
  • relay chat messages between different hangout group conversations (syncrooms)
  • configure via bot commands (syncrooms_config)

The wiki has a more comprehensive list of plugins

Interacting with the Bot

There are two general types of interactions with the bot:

• /bot commands begin with /bot e.g. /bot dosomething
  • some bot commands are admin-only
• custom interactions (usage and accessibility varies by plugin)

The base bot supports some basic command even without any plugins loaded. Here is a partial list:

/bot help

• Bot lists all supported commands in a private message with the user

/bot ping

• Bot replies with a pong.

/bot version

• Bot replies with the version number of the framework

A full list of commands supported by the base framework is available at the Core Commands wiki page.

Updating

1. Navigate to the repository directory (eg. cd ~/hangupsbot)

2. git pull to pull the latest version of hangupsbot

3. Install lastest features

   make install
   

   You can specify a custom location for the virtual environment:

   make install venv=/my/path
   

4. Restart the bot

Debugging

• Run the bot with the -d parameter e.g.

  ./venv/bin/hangupsbot -d
  

  • this lowers the log level to DEBUG for a more verbose and informative log file.
• tail -F the log file, which is probably located at /<user>/.local/share/hangupsbot/hangupsbot.log - the location varies by distro!
• A second log file <name of the default logfile>_warnings.log is created to catch log messages on level WARNING and above to find break points faster.
• Console output (STDOUT) is limited to level WARNING and above in normal mode, level DEBUG is applied in debug mode.

Tips for troubleshooting

Program isn't running:

• Update hangupsbot and its dependecies
• Run ./venv/bin/hangups to check if the original hangups library is working
  • If there are errors, delete the cookie at ~/.local/share/hangupsbot/cookies.json and try again
  • Log into your Google Account from the server's address.

Bot isn't responding to messages:

• Check that the chats are not going into the 'Invites' section of Hangouts.

Extending

Please see https://github.com/hangoutsbot/hangoutsbot/wiki/Authoring-Bot-Extensions

Credits / History

Hangoutsbot is derived from hangoutsbot

On 2017-07-17, this fork was made standalone