SO-ChatBot-Driver

(StackOverflow Chat Bot Driver)

A little project hacked out of the following:

• SO-ChatBot
• Disappointment at the need (by default) to run SO-ChatBot in a web browser on a desktop or X11 session; this does not mesh well with the architecture of a headless GNU/Linux server
• A desire to have a dedicated chat bot in Root Access on chat.stackexchange.com
• Motivation to learn Selenium WebDriver framework and use PhantomJS in something neat
• That's about it, really.

So WTF does it do?

• You build it (either as a .jar or loose class files), and pass it command line parameters to tell it where it should live and who it should login as.
• You download and build SO-ChatBot and PhantomJS.
• You have a StackExchange or StackOverflow account with at least 20 rep (that you can dedicate to this purpose).
• Once it works, it drives PhantomJS by invoking the command phantomjs from the PATH environment variable; logging into StackExchange; and navigating to the chat room of your choice. Then, it loads the SO-ChatBot JavaScript payload and the rest is history.

Dependencies

• PhantomJS 2.x or later (tested with the 2.0 Tech Preview) on the PATH as phantomjs or phantomjs.exe
• SO-ChatBot, or any other JavaScript-based chatbot for SE chat; this driver does not assume any implementation details about the bot itself except that it's written in clientside JavaScript. Targeting ES5-strict is strongly recommended.
• Java 1.7 (OpenJDK or Sun JDK 7) with the jar and javac programs for compiling
• Tons of libraries in the third_party directory, about 20 MB worth (Selenium, Apache Commons, etc.)
• For compiling, you need ant 1.8 or later

Anti-Dependencies (things this does NOT depend on)

• Python (burn it with fire!)
• Ruby
• NodeJS (if the bot could authenticate using NodeJS, this driver would become obsolete)
• Clang
• The phase of the moon
• The 2013 Orioles winning the World Series

Build

Just run ant in the base directory, and it'll call the build script in build.xml.

Run

Run java -jar so-chatbot-driver.jar --help for usage instructions. You will need to specify whether you want to run it with Firefox (requires a running X11 server on Linux/BSD) or with PhantomJS, which is completely headless.

Note: If you are planning to use the Firefox with SO-ChatBot-Driver, or PhantomJS 2.0 or later, you can stop reading here. The below documentation is a historical note on how to use SO-ChatBot-Driver with PhantomJS 1.9.x, which needed certain JavaScript shims to be able to support a subset of the features of SO-ChatBot without crashing.

---

What gives you (allquixotic) stomach ulcers?

• The fact that PhantomJS is generally quite far behind Chromium and Firefox in its JavaScript engine, due to the difficulty of porting WebKit to QtWebKit, and then pulling in a new version of Qt to use as a basis for PhantomJS (---using a very old version of WebKit (approx. Safari 5.1 from 2011) with default JSCore as the JavaScript engine, instead of Chrome's superior V8.--- this used to be true with PhantomJS 1.9.x)
• The fact that the authors of SO-ChatBot felt the need to use every single experimental/advanced/brand-spanking-new JavaScript API under the sun. In fact, they're probably writing up a patch right now that is going to use an API that is being committed to V8 git next month. Hell, they probably wrote the damn thing.

Modifications to master.js (SO-ChatBot) to get it working with PhantomJS 1.9.x (not needed with PhantomJS 2.x since the Qt 5.2 based QtWebKit is much newer and seems to mostly work with SO-ChatBot)

Use My Repo (Way 1)

https://github.com/allquixotic/SO-ChatBot/commit/fe24dd806188c279ce122f0011037f2fb8219129

Don't ask how it works.

Manual Method (Way 2)

1. Grab the es5-sham.min.js from es5-shim and paste it into master.js.

2. Paste in the following code to shim out bind:

if(!Function.prototype.bind){Function.prototype.bind=function(scope){var self=this;return function(){return self.apply(scope,arguments)}}}

3. Use a BlobBuilder shim. This is a particularly robust one that seems to work with PhantomJS:

var BlobBuilder=BlobBuilder||self.WebKitBlobBuilder||self.MozBlobBuilder||(function(view){"use strict";var get_class=function(object){return Object.prototype.toString.call(object).match(/^\[object\s(.*)\]$/)[1]},FakeBlobBuilder=function(){},FakeBlob=function(data,type){this.data=data;this.size=data.length;this.type=type},FBB_proto=FakeBlobBuilder.prototype=[],FB_proto=FakeBlob.prototype,FileReaderSync=view.FileReaderSync,FileException=function(type){this.code=this[this.name=type]},file_ex_codes=("NOT_FOUND_ERR SECURITY_ERR ABORT_ERR NOT_READABLE_ERR ENCODING_ERR "+"NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR INVALID_STATE_ERR SYNTAX_ERR").split(" "),file_ex_code=file_ex_codes.length,URL=view.URL=view.URL||view.webkitURL||view,real_create_object_url,real_revoke_object_url,btoa=view.btoa,can_apply_typed_arrays=false,can_apply_typed_arrays_test=function(pass){can_apply_typed_arrays=!pass},ArrayBuffer=view.ArrayBuffer,Uint8Array=view.Uint8Array;while(file_ex_code--){FileException.prototype[file_ex_codes[file_ex_code]]=file_ex_code+1}try{if(Uint8Array){can_apply_typed_arrays_test.apply(0,new Uint8Array(1))}}catch(ex){}if(!URL.createObjectURL){URL={}}real_create_object_url=URL.createObjectURL;real_revoke_object_url=URL.revokeObjectURL;URL.createObjectURL=function(blob){var type=blob.type;if(type===null){type="application/octet-stream"}if(blob instanceof FakeBlob){if(btoa){return"data:"+type+";base64,"+btoa(blob.data)}else{return"data:"+type+","+encodeURIComponent(blob.data)}}else if(real_create_object_url){return real_create_object_url.call(URL,blob)}};URL.revokeObjectURL=function(object_url){if(object_url.substring(0,5)!=="data:"&&real_revoke_object_url){real_revoke_object_url.call(URL,object_url)}};FBB_proto.append=function(data){var bb=this;if(Uint8Array&&data instanceof ArrayBuffer){if(can_apply_typed_arrays){bb.push(String.fromCharCode.apply(String,new Uint8Array(data)))}else{var str="",buf=new Uint8Array(data),i=0,buf_len=buf.length;for(;i<buf_len;i++){str+=String.fromCharCode(buf[i])}}}else if(get_class(data)==="Blob"||get_class(data)==="File"){if(FileReaderSync){var fr=new FileReaderSync;bb.push(fr.readAsBinaryString(data))}else{throw new FileException("NOT_READABLE_ERR")}}else if(data instanceof FakeBlob){bb.push(data.data)}else{if(typeof data!=="string"){data+=""}bb.push(unescape(encodeURIComponent(data)))}};FBB_proto.getBlob=function(type){if(!arguments.length){type=null}return new FakeBlob(this.join(""),type)};FBB_proto.toString=function(){return"[object BlobBuilder]"};FB_proto.slice=function(start,end,type){var args=arguments.length;if(args<3){type=null}return new FakeBlob(this.data.slice(start,args>1?end:this.data.length),type)};FB_proto.toString=function(){return"[object Blob]"};return FakeBlobBuilder}(self));

4. Modify the source code itself of master.js as follows:

var b_b = new BlobBuilder();
b_b.append([worker_code]);
var blob = b_b.getBlob('application/javascript'),
code_url = window.URL.createObjectURL( blob );
//var blob = new Blob( [worker_code], { type : 'application/javascript' } ),
//code_url = window.URL.createObjectURL( blob );

License

Apache License 2.0 - http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.txt