Programming Jabber

Message callback

Next, we define the callback to handle incoming <message/> elements:

def messageCB(con, msg):

    type = msg.getType()
    if type == None:
        type = 'normal'

As usual, we’re expecting the message callback to be passed the connection object (in con) and the message object itself (msg). How this callback is to proceed is determined by the type of message received. We determine the type (taken from the <message/> element’s type attribute) and store it in the variable called type. Remember that if no type attribute is present, a message type of normal is assumed. (See Section 5.4.1.1 for details of <message/> attributes.)

The two types of incoming messages we’re expecting this script to receive are those conveying the room’s conversation—in groupchat-type messages—and those over which the commands such as watch and ignore are carried, which we expect in the form of normal- or chat-type messages.

The first main section of the messageCB handler deals with incoming commands:

 # Deal with interaction if type == 'chat' or type == 'normal': jid = str(msg.getFrom()) message = split(msg.getBody(), None, 1); reply = "" if message[0] == 'watch': addword(jid, message[1]) reply = "Okay, watching for " + message[1] if message[0] == 'ignore': delword(jid, message[1]) reply = "Okay, now ignoring " + message[1] if message[0] == 'list': if keywords.has_key(jid): reply = "Watching for: " + join(keywords[jid].keys(), ", ") else: reply = "Not watching for any keywords" if message[0] == 'stop': ...