hermes

Hermes is an extensible XMPP-based chatroom server written in Python. Easily setup and manage chatrooms for friends or colleagues.

How it Works

Supply your own XMPP-based accounts (Google accounts work great!) to serve as chatroom hosts, add a bit of configuration, and that's it. All chatroom members are invited to chat with the chatroom host which will in turn broadcast their messages to all other members.

Usage

The "Hello World" usage of Hermes looks like this. Put the following in chatserver.py, update the user and chatroom info, and run it:

from hermes.api import run_server

brain = { 'JID': 'brain@wb.com', 'NICK': 'brain', 'ADMIN': True }
pinky = { 'JID': 'pinky.suavo@wb.com', 'NICK': 'pinky' }

chatrooms = {
    'world-domination-planning': {
        'JID': 'world.domination.planning@wb.com',
        'PASSWORD': 'thesamethingwedoeverynight',
        'SERVER': ('talk.google.com', 5223,),
        'MEMBERS': [pinky, brain],
    },
}

run_server(chatrooms)

Installation

Available from PyPI: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/hermes/. pip is the recommended installation method:

pip install hermes

Commands

Hermes interprets some messages as commands:

• /mute - Mute the chatroom. Messages are queued up for whenever you unmute the chatroom.

• /unmute - Unmute the chatroom. Receive all messages that were queued while the chatroom was muted.

• /invite <handle> - Invite members to the chatroom. Available to admins only.

• /kick <handle> - Kick members from the chatroom. Available to admins only.

• /marco - Not sure if you're still connected to the chatroom? Chatroom replies to you (and only you) with "polo".

Extensibility

You can extend the base chatroom class hermes.Chatroom to modify or add extra functionality.

Adding a command_patterns static property to your class should be particularly useful for extensions. It's a list of regular expression/method name pairs. Each incoming message is tested against the regexes until a match is found. On a match, the named instance method is invoked to handle the message instead of the default message-handling pipeline.

Specify the path to your creation as a string or the Class itself as the CLASS of your chatroom:

from hermes.api import run_server, Chatroom

class BillyMaysChatroom(Chatroom):
    command_patterns = ((r'.*', 'shout'),)

    def shout(self, sender, body, match):
        body = body.upper() #SHOUT IT
        self.broadcast(body)

chatrooms = {
    'world-domination-planning': {
        'CLASS': 'BillyMaysChatroom',
        'JID': 'world.domination.planning@wb.com',
        'PASSWORD': 'thesamethingwedoeverynight',
        'SERVER': ('talk.google.com', 5223,),
        'MEMBERS': [pinky, brain],
    },
}

run_server(chatrooms)

Upcoming Features

• Persistence: Allow chatroom configuration/state/history to be persisted

Is it any good?

Yes.

Elaborate, you say? Hermes has been successfully used "in production" to run several chatrooms for the Crocodoc team since the first commit. It's good to have guinea pigs.

License

Hermes is an ISC licensed library. See LICENSE for more details. If you insist on compensating me, I'd let you buy me a beer. Or just donate money to a good cause...that'd probably be best.

Can I Contribute?

Yes, please do. Pull requests are great. I'll totally add a CONTRIBUTORS.txt when Hermes gets its first contributor.