This quick tutorial will show you how to develop your own functional IM bot that works with Google Talk, Yahoo! Messenger, Windows Live and all other popular instant messaging clients. To get started, all you need to know are some very basic programming skills (any language would do) and web space to host your “bot”. I have created this using PHP. Using this I can creat a dummy bot called “mynewbot” that listens to your IM messages. To see this live, add mynewbot@bot.im to your GTalk buddy list and start chatting.
If you like to write a personal IM bot, just follow these simple steps:-
Creating IM Bots
Step 1: Go to www.imified.com and register a new account with a bot.
Step 2: Now it’s time to create a bot which is actually a simple script that resides on your public web server.
It could be in PHP, Perl, Python or any other language.
Example Hello World bot:
The example below illustrates just how easy it is to create a bot.
This example is coded in PHP.
http://uploading.com/files/m5299585/make%2Bur%2Bbot-hello%2Bcode.php/
Step 3: Once your script is ready, put it somewhere on your web server and copy the full URL to the clipboard.
Step 4: Now login to your imified account, paste the script URL
Screen Name: hacking@bot.im
Bot Script URL: http://www.insecure.in/imbot.php
Step 5: Add that im bot your friends list. That’s it.
This is a very basic bot but the possibilities are endless.
Uses of IM Bots
- IM users can add the name of the IM bot to their buddy list the same way they add co-workers, family, and friends.
- Because the bot uses artificial intelligence (AI), the end user has the feeling he is talking to a real person and is apt to forget that he is really just querying a database.
- Enterprise-class instant messaging systems are incorporating IM bots to provide a convenient way for employees to look up information.
- Some IM bots are able to connect to outside databases and provide the user with news, weather reports, driving directions, movie times, stock quotes, and just about any other information you can think of that can be found in a database.
- IM bots are also called interactive agents.