Hmmm i'm not even sure if this is possible but hey I'll have a go at explaining... say I want to make like a forum signature that updates as to the user's status (online/offline) in a specific IRC channel. Would I need to look into coding an IRC bot that updates the information through a server or something? I'm completely out of my depth until I get some form of direction so thought I'd ask. I'll be coding it (if I do/can) in perl, but still, some form of input would be good :)
It can be done yes, you would have to host the script somewhere and is probably best done in PHP but im sure you could do it in perl if where you hosting the script allows it, basically you would just check if your username is in the channel, then relay it back, ive seen things like that done inside pictures as well, so like dynamic pictures with peoples number of posts and such which is cool
Yeah I just came up with the idea I knew about the dynamic sig's for posts and gaming accounts etc and yeah was wondering if it could be applied, sounds like it can. would be cool to get it working.
dynamic webscripted images are sometimes a problem with limited hosting, usually you would have to config apache to run image extension files through cgi or php rather than serving the files.. but sometimes forums allow you to set signatures with a direct url to the php/cgi script involved. either way to acheive it, iirc, you have to ouput a slightly different header, ie. "Content-type: image/png".. and then output the manipulated image data.
but since you need information from IRC you most likely won't be able to do it properly on limited hosting anyway (depending on the method you use). the way i see it, your options are (from best to worst):
1. find out if the server offers the information you need in a simple to read fromat (ie. webpage). there might also be other services out there which list this information, but i doubt it. if you can get that information, it's a simple case of parsing the data, overlaying text on an image using somekind of imaging library, outputting it with the appropriate content type. amusingly, malvager used to provide this information.
2. have a dedicated bot sitting in the channel that will send infomation (JOIN/QUIT) about user states back and forth to the webserver, then do the same to output the image. this is a little overkill.
depending on how you want it you might be able to miss the image manipulation step, for example you could have two images for offline and online and simply transmit them via script with the appropriate headers. of course, if you need a username on them, that's not an option (unless images were created manually, or limited in some way).
Thanks sangf, I think my idea comes in the form of option 2... it does sound a lot of work but I suppose it'd be pretty much the only option if the host doesn't have the facility to relay/display the information.
I've seen a few irc bot samples in perl so I'll see what comes up. It'll give me more pratice in perl sockets so yeah.
yeah, might want to try Net::IRC for the IRC stuff, i hear it's the influence of pythons irclib (which is pretty nice to use besides its lacking documentation). let me know if you have any probs with the web side of things, i might be able to help.