Format: complete Title: How to use Alter Ego

Introduction

Alter Ego is a XMPP agent, a bot that runs using your own JID, but with a negative priority.

It allows you to deploy XMPP-based services that can be controlled using your roster and your buddies presence status.

Alter Ego is licensed under the Artistic License.

How to run

Running Alter Ego is a three step process:

• install dependencies;
• configure Alter Ego;
• start Alter Ego.

Dependencies

Alter Ego is written in Perl, and requires some modules available at CPAN.

For now, you have to install those manually. Usually it should be as simple as:

cpan module_name

The modules you need are:

• Net::XMPP2;
• Carp::Clan;
• Config::Any;
• DateTime;
• Module::Pluggable;
• Scope::Guard;
• Class::C3::Componentised.

Configure Alter Ego

Right now, Alter Ego is written to run directly from the unpacked directory.

First you need to copy the etc/alter_ego_cfg.json configuration file to the root of the project as .alter_ego_cfg.json and edit with your account information.

Running Alter Ego

From the root of the unpacked directory run ./bin/alter_ego.

Plugins

Alter Ego is based on Plugins. Every functionality is a plugin.

Right now, the only Plugin available is a User Location.

If you want to create your own plugins, see the 1_PLUGINS.md file.

User Location

The User Location plugin does three things:

• it discovers your current default gateway, and his mac address;
• searches a set of local location databases that map mac address => XEP-0080 attributes;
• if found, update your XEP-0080 node.

To use this, you just have to copy the sample user location database in etc/sample_user_location_db.json to the root project directory as .location_db.json and update it with your own locations.

There is no need to restart the agent whenever you change this database. All modifications will be picked up automatically.