Welcome to ft_irc 💬

This project is about creating a small IRC server that can be used with a real IRC client to chat, create chat rooms, send private messages to one or multiple users, etc ...

We tested it with Netcat (TCP/UDP client) and IRSSI (IRC client)

Installation instructions

Clone the project and launch make to build the server executable :

git clone git@github.com:twagger/ft_irc.git
cd ft_irc
make

Usage instruction

Launch the server

./ircserv [port number] [password]

For example

./ircserv 6667 my-password

Connect to the server with a Netcat

nc -C 127.0.0.1 6667

note : we use the -C option because IRC messages end with \r\n as defined in the RFC 2812 standards.

note : We used 127.0.0.1 since our server is launched in localhost.

Authenticate

You need to authenticate to the server otherwise you will be deconnected quickly :

pass my-password
user tom 0 * :tom
nick tom

note : To understand more abour the authentification process please look here.

Connect to the server with IRSSI

irssi
/connect 127.0.0.1 6667 my-password

note : The authentification process is automatically done by irssi.

note : Your user will be known in the server as plop.

Commands

We implemented a lot of command from the RFC 2812. We didn't implemented the multi server commands as it was not required in the project.

Category	Commands
Server	DIE, INFO, MOTD, PING, PONG, QUIT, SERVICES, TIME, VERSION
User	USER, KILL, MODE (B, i, o, r, s), NICK, OPER, PASS, WHO, WHOIS
Channel	INVITE, JOIN, KICK, LIST, MODE (b, i, k, o), NAMES, PART, TOPIC
Private message	PRIVMSG, NOTICE

Extra features

file transfer : XDCC

We where asked to implement file transfer. If you are using a proper IRC client like IRSSI, you can use XDCC (eXtended DCC) which use direct messages to establish a direct connection between two clients so they can share files.

Sending file to another client

/dcc send [nickname of user] [path of the file between quotes]

Example

/dcc send plop_ "Documents/test.txt"

Receiving file from a client

/dcc get [nickname of user][name of the file between quotes]

example

/dcc get plop "test.text"

Answering bot

We implemented it as a simple client using the command services. This bot can be contacted by private message and answer to specific commands only :

• QUOTE : give the quote of the day
• TIME : give the exact time of the sercer

The bot is a second separate program that need to be launched and connected to server with a specific command :

./ircbot [hostname] [password]

Then the bot is available on the server and can interact with real users. It is a very simple bot but it could be enhanced a lot to be more useful. We just wanted to understand the concept here.

Resources

• RFC
• Channel related RFC
• Tutorial on how to implement a server in french
• Website made by 42 students from Paris

Credits

• 🖼️ Illustrative image from : here