DiaWebLog Bot by example

The Basics

Chat room:

<monkey> http://mesh.diaweblog.com
<davebot> a: MESH DiaWebLog
<monkey> a, Here's MESH's diaweblog.
<llama> a, It's *really* cool!
<monkey> a, Also, check out [MESH's homepage, http://mesh.eecs.umich.edu]
<llama> a, Here's their logo: +http://mesh.eecs.umich.edu/images/logo.gif

Weblog:

MESH DiaWebLog
posted by (monkey) on April 22, 2003 at 19:54 [#7925] (a)

(monkey) Here's MESH's diaweblog
(llama) It's really cool!
(monkey) Also, check out MESH's homepage
(llama) Here's their logo:

What happened:

Monkey says a URL. Davebot, the chat room's DiaWebLog Bot, hears the URL and adds a new item named "a" to the weblog. Monkey adds a comment to the item by saying the item's name ("a") followed by a comma (,) and the comment. By using special characters in their comments, they can add links and images and make words italics.

Note that the bot gave the item a title itself. It fetched the page at the URL and got the title from the page. You can also manually set the title by putting the title before the URL, with a comma in-between. This is shown later.

Chat room:

<llama> @item Party at my house tonight!
<davebot> b: Party at my house tonight!
<monkey> b, Woohoo, I'll be there.

Weblog:

Party at my house tonight!
posted by (llama) on April 22, 2003 at 19:55 [#7926] (b)

(monkey) Woohoo, I'll be there.

What happened:

Llama posts an item without a title by saying "@item" followed by the title. Monkey then adds a comment.

All DiaWebLog Bot commands start with "@". "@item" posts an item with a title, but no URL. Llama could have said "@ITEM". Case does matter for command names.

Editing items

Chat room:

<monkey> MESH DiaWebFrog, http://mesh.diawebfrog.com
<davebot> c: MESH DiaWebFrog
<monkey> DiaWebFROG!  That's not right!
<monkey> @title c MESH DiaWebLog
<monkey> @url c http://mesh.diaweblog.com
<monkey> c, Here's MESH's diaweblog.
<llama> c, It's *really* col!
<monkey> uh, what's col?
<llama> c2, It's *really* cool

Weblog:

MESH DiaWebLog

posted by (monkey) on April 22, 2003 at 19:56 [#7927] (c)

(monkey) Here's MESH's diaweblog
(llama) It's really cool!

What happened:

Monkey posts an item titled "MESH DiaWebFrog". He manually sets the title by putting the title before the URL. But he meant to say "log" where he said "frog". To fix this, he uses the title and url commands to change the title and url.

Llama then adds a comment to item b, but misspells "cool". To change it, he says "c2, It's really *cool*!" to fix item b's comment #2. (Monkey made comment #1.) Llama could also have said "c/col/cool/" to change any "col" in item c to "cool".

Polls

Chat room:

<monkey> @POLL What's your
      favorite animal? ; monkey ; llama ; amoeba
<davebot> d: What's your favorite animal?...
<monkey> d, 1
<monkey> d, Yeah, monkeys rule!!!
<llama> d, 2
<goat> d, 2

Weblog:

What's your favorite animal?

posted by (monkey) on April 23, 2003 at 13:10 [#7928] (d)

Poll Results
Total votes: 3

monkey

33%

llama

66%

amoeba
0%

(monkey) Yeah, monkeys rule!!!

What happened:

Monkey creates a poll by saying "@POLL...". A poll has a question and a list of options. There should be a semicolon (;) between the question and the first option and between each pair of options.

Vote for an option by adding a comment with the option's number. For example, to vote for monkey say "d, 1", for llama "d, 2", and for amoeba "d, 3". Comments that aren't votes are displayed below the poll results as regular comments.

Check out the DiaWebLog Bot Reference for more documentation.