plugins/PERL-HOWTO

This is really the wrong place for a HOWTO on writing perl scripts for gaim,
but there didn't seem to be a much better place.

If you've ever written a perl script for X-Chat then you've basically written
one for gaim as well. perl.c in gaim's source is basically an exact copy of
X-Chat's perl.c file, with small modifications to suit Gaim rather than IRC.

Basically the reason for including perl is based on the experience with the
plugins. X-Chat's docs on Perl Scripting sums it up nicely:
   it's not quite as simple to stick a module together in C and make it
   stable compared to the development time of perl code

Plugins are more powerful as they can directly access gaim's functions and
variables; as such they should be used for things like modifying the UI or
when something takes quite a bit of trickery not offered by perl. But for
the most part things should be written in Perl. It's more stable than
plugins.

There's a really quick simple perl script in this directory, gaim.pl, that
should show most of the functions. Most things should be self-explanatory.

There's one thing you need to be aware of in perl scripts for gaim. Gaim
supports multiple connections, and perl deals with them by using a unique
identifier for each of them (that's a fancy way of saying that perl scripts
use the memory address of the connection). 

Everything available in normal perl scripts should be available in gaim's
perl interface, so I'm not going to bother describing that. The important
things are the functions provided by gaim's internal GAIM module, which is
what most of this document is about. So, onto the functions.

GAIM::register(name, version, shutdownroutine, unused)
	Just like X-Chat. This is the first function your script should call.
	shutdownroutine is a function that will be called when the script
	gets unloaded (like when gaim gets closed). This function returns
	gaim's version number.

GAIM::get_info(integer, ...)
	This function returns different information based on the integer passed
	to it.
	0 - the version of gaim you're running ("0.10.0" for example).
	1 - the list of connection ids
	2 - given a connection index, the protocol it uses (as an int)
	3 - given a connection index, the screenname of the person
	4 - given a connection index, the index in the users list
	5 - the list of names of users
	6 - the list of protocols of the users
	7 - given a connection index, the name of the protocol (as a string)

GAIM::print(title, message)
	This displays a nice little dialog window.


GAIM::buddy_list(index)
	This returns the buddy list (no groups, just the names of the buddies)
	for the specified connection.

GAIM::online_list(index)
	This returns the list of online buddies for the specified connection.


GAIM::command(command, ...)
	This sends commands to the server, and each command takes various
	arguments. The command should be self-explanatory:
	"signon" - the second arg is the index of the user to sign on
	"signoff" - the optional second arg is the connection index to sign off.
		    if no args are given, all connections are signed off.
	"away" - the second arg is the away message
	"back" - no args.
	"idle" - the second arg is how long (in seconds) to set the idle time
		 (this sets the idle time for all connections)
	"warn" - the second arg is the name of the person to warn. this is
		 especially evil since it warns the person from every 
		 connection.  The third argument is 1 if you want to warn
		 anonymously.  If 0 or ommitted, it will warn normally.
	"info" - the second arg is the connection index whose info you want to set,
	         and the third arg is what you want to set your profile to.

GAIM::user_info(index, nick)
	Returns 8 data items:
		the screenname of the buddy
		the alias of the buddy
		"Online" or "Offline"
		their warning level
		signon time, in seconds since the epoch
		idle time, in seconds (?)
		user class, an integer with bit values
			AOL		1
			ADMIN		2
			UNCONFIRMED	4
			NORMAL		8
			AWAY		16
		their capabilites, an integer with bit values
			BUDDYICON	1
			VOICE		2
			IMIMAGE		4
			CHAT		8
			GETFILE		16
			SENDFILE	32
	Since buddy lists are per-connection this goes through the connections
	until it finds a matching buddy name.

GAIM::write_to_conv(to, wflags, what, who)
	This displays a message into a conversation window. <wflags> is the
	message-style and works like that:
		wflags==0: display message as if received by <who>
		wflags==1: display message as if sent by <who>
		wflags==2: display system message

GAIM::serv_send_im(index, who, what, auto)
	Sends what from the connection index to who. :)

GAIM::print_to_conv(index, who, what, auto)
	Convenience function; combination of write_to_conv and serv_send_im.

GAIM::print_to_chat(index, room, what)
	Room is actually an int. Read SIGNALS to find out why.

GAIM::add_event_handler(event, function)
	This is the most important of them all. This is basically exactly like
	gaim_signal_connect for plugins. You pass which event you want to connect to
	(a string with the same name as the events for plugins, see SIGNALS), and a
	string with the name of the function you want called. Simple enough?

	When this is triggered, the arguments will be passed in @_ and are broken
	into a list. This is different from all previous versions of Gaim, where you
	had to parse the arguments yourself. The arguments are quite different from
	what's passed to the plugins, though they are very similar, and you should
	read perl.c to figure out what they are. The arguments are passed after the
	plugins have had their way with them. Perl scripts cannot modify the values
	so that gaim knows what the changes are.

	Perl scripts can short-circuit certain events (namely event_im_send,
	event_im_recv, event_chat_send, and event_chat_recv). To short-circuit an
	event simply return a non-0 value. This will cause all subsequent scripts
	and the event itself to never happen (i.e. the user won't see it happen,
	and _send events won't actually send).

GAIM::add_timeout_handler(integer, function, args)
	This calls function after integer number of seconds. It only calls function
	once, so if you want to keep calling function, keep readding the handler.
	Args is a string that you'd like to have passed to your timeout handler; it's
	optional.