# NAME RiveScript - Rendering Intelligence Very Easily # SYNOPSIS ```perl use RiveScript; # Create a new RiveScript interpreter. my $rs = new RiveScript; # Load a directory of replies. $rs->loadDirectory ("./replies"); # Load another file. $rs->loadFile ("./more_replies.rive"); # Stream in some RiveScript code. $rs->stream (q~ + hello bot - Hello, human. ~); # Sort all the loaded replies. $rs->sortReplies; # Chat with the bot. while (1) { print "You> "; chomp (my $msg = ); my $reply = $rs->reply ('localuser',$msg); print "Bot> $reply\n"; } ``` # DESCRIPTION RiveScript is a simple trigger/response language primarily used for the creation of chatting robots. It's designed to have an easy-to-learn syntax but provide a lot of power and flexibility. For more information, visit http://www.rivescript.com/ # METHODS ## GENERAL - RiveScript new (hash %ARGS) Create a new instance of a RiveScript interpreter. The instance will become its own "chatterbot," with its own set of responses and user variables. You can pass in any global variables here. The two standard variables are: debug - Turns on debug mode (a LOT of information will be printed to the terminal!). Default is 0 (disabled). verbose - When debug mode is on, all debug output will be printed to the terminal if 'verbose' is also true. The default value is 1. debugfile - Optional: paired with debug mode, all debug output is also written to this file name. Since debug mode prints such a large amount of data, it is often more practical to have the output go to an external file for later review. Default is '' (no file). utf8 - Enable UTF-8 support for the RiveScript code. See the section on UTF-8 support for details. depth - Determines the recursion depth limit when following a trail of replies that point to other replies. Default is 50. strict - If this has a true value, any syntax errors detected while parsing a RiveScript document will result in a fatal error. Set it to a false value and only a warning will result. Default is 1. It's recommended that if you set any other global variables that you do so by calling `setGlobal` or defining it within the RiveScript code. This will avoid the possibility of overriding reserved globals. Currently, these variable names are reserved: topics sorted sortsthat sortedthat thats arrays subs person client bot objects syntax sortlist reserved debugopts frozen globals handlers objlangs Note: the options "verbose" and "debugfile", when provided, are noted and then deleted from the root object space, so that if your RiveScript code uses variables by the same values it won't conflict with the values that you passed here. ## LOADING AND PARSING - bool loadDirectory (string $PATH\[, string @EXTS\]) Load a directory full of RiveScript documents. `$PATH` must be a path to a directory. `@EXTS` is optionally an array containing file extensions, including the dot. By default `@EXTS` is `('.rive', '.rs')`. Returns true on success, false on failure. - bool loadFile (string $PATH) Load a single RiveScript document. `$PATH` should be the path to a valid RiveScript file. Returns true on success; false otherwise. - bool stream (arrayref $CODE) Stream RiveScript code directly into the module. This is for providing RS code from within the Perl script instead of from an external file. Returns true on success. - string checkSyntax (char $COMMAND, string $LINE) Check the syntax of a line of RiveScript code. This is called automatically for each line parsed by the module. `$COMMAND` is the command part of the line, and `$LINE` is the rest of the line following the command (and excluding inline comments). If there is no problem with the line, this method returns `undef`. Otherwise it returns the text of the syntax error. If `strict` mode is enabled in the constructor (which is on by default), a syntax error will result in a fatal error. If it's not enabled, the error is only sent via `warn` and the file currently being processed is aborted. - void sortReplies () Call this method after loading replies to create an internal sort buffer. This is necessary for trigger matching purposes. If you fail to call this method yourself, RiveScript will call it once when you request a reply. However, it will complain loudly about it. - data deparse () Translate the in-memory representation of the loaded RiveScript documents into a Perl data structure. This would be useful for developing a user interface to facilitate editing of RiveScript replies without having to edit the RiveScript code manually. The data structure returned from this will follow this format: ```perl { "begin" => { # Contains begin block and config settings "global" => { # ! global (global variables) "depth" => 50, ... }, "var" => { # ! var (bot variables) "name" => "Aiden", ... }, "sub" => { # ! sub (substitutions) "what's" => "what is", ... }, "person" => { # ! person (person substitutions) "you" => "I", ... }, "array" => { # ! array (arrays) "colors" => [ "red", "green", "light green", "blue" ], ... }, "triggers" => { # triggers in your > begin block "request" => { # trigger "+ request" "reply" => [ "{ok}" ], }, }, }, "topic" => { # all topics under here "random" => { # topic names (default is random) "hello bot" => { # trigger labels "reply" => [ "Hello human!" ], # Array of -Replies "redirect" => "hello", # Only if @Redirect exists "previous" => "hello human", # Only if %Previous exists "condition" => [ # Only if *Conditions exist " != undefined => Hello !", ... ], }, }, }, "include" => { # topic inclusion "alpha" => [ "beta", "gamma" ], # > topic alpha includes beta gamma }, "inherit" => { # topic inheritence "alpha" => [ "delta" ], # > topic alpha inherits delta } } ``` Note that inline object macros can't be deparsed this way. This is probably for the best (for security, etc). The global variables "debug" and "depth" are only provided if the values differ from the defaults (true and 50, respectively). - void write (glob $fh || string $file\[, data $deparsed\]) Write the currently parsed RiveScript data into a RiveScript file. This uses `deparse()` to dump a representation of the loaded data and writes it to the destination file. Pass either a filehandle or a file name. If you provide `$deparsed`, it should be a data structure matching the format of `deparse()`. This way you can deparse your RiveScript brain, add/edit replies and then pass in the new version to this method to save the changes back to disk. Otherwise, `deparse()` will be called to get the current snapshot of the brain. ## CONFIGURATION - bool setHandler (string $LANGUAGE => code $CODEREF, ...) Define some code to handle objects of a particular programming language. If the coderef is `undef`, it will delete the handler. The code receives the variables `$rs, $action, $name,` and `$data`. These variables are described here: $rs = Reference to Perl RiveScript object. $action = "load" during the parsing phase when an >object is found. "call" when provoked via a tag for a reply $name = The name of the object. $data = The source of the object during the parsing phase, or an array reference of arguments when provoked via a tag. There is a default handler set up that handles Perl objects. If you want to block Perl objects from being loaded, you can just set it to be undef, and its handler will be deleted and Perl objects will be skipped over: ```perl $rs->setHandler (perl => undef); ``` The rationale behind this "pluggable" object interface is that it makes RiveScript more flexible given certain environments. For instance, if you use RiveScript on the web where the user chats with your bot using CGI, you might define a handler so that JavaScript objects can be loaded and called. Perl itself can't execute JavaScript, but the user's web browser can. See the JavaScript example in the `docs` directory in this distribution. - bool setSubroutine (string $NAME, code $CODEREF) Manually create a RiveScript object (a dynamic bit of Perl code that can be provoked in a RiveScript response). `$NAME` should be a single-word, alphanumeric string. `$CODEREF` should be a pointer to a subroutine or an anonymous sub. - bool setGlobal (hash %DATA) Set one or more global variables, in hash form, where the keys are the variable names and the values are their value. This subroutine will make sure that you don't override any reserved global variables, and warn if that happens. This is equivalent to `! global` in RiveScript code. To delete a global, set its value to `undef` or "``". This is true for variables, substitutions, person, and uservars. - bool setVariable (hash %DATA) Set one or more bot variables (things that describe your bot's personality). This is equivalent to `! var` in RiveScript code. - bool setSubstitution (hash %DATA) Set one or more substitution patterns. The keys should be the original word, and the value should be the word to substitute with it. ```perl $rs->setSubstitution ( q{what's} => 'what is', q{what're} => 'what are', ); ``` This is equivalent to `! sub` in RiveScript code. - bool setPerson (hash %DATA) Set a person substitution. This is equivalent to `! person` in RiveScript code. - bool setUservar (string $USER, hash %DATA) Set a variable for a user. `$USER` should be their User ID, and `%DATA` is a hash containing variable/value pairs. This is like `` for a specific user. - string getUservar (string $USER, string $VAR) This is an alias for getUservars, and is here because it makes more grammatical sense. - data getUservars (\[string $USER\]\[, string $VAR\]) Get all the variables about a user. If a username is provided, returns a hash __reference__ containing that user's information. Else, a hash reference of all the users and their information is returned. You can optionally pass a second argument, `$VAR`, to get a specific variable that belongs to the user. For instance, `getUservars ("soandso", "age")`. This is like `` for a specific user or for all users. - bool clearUservars (\[string $USER\]) Clears all variables about `$USER`. If no `$USER` is provided, clears all variables about all users. - bool freezeUservars (string $USER) Freeze the current state of variables for user `$USER`. This will back up the user's current state (their variables and reply history). This won't statically prevent the user's state from changing; it merely saves its current state. Then use thawUservars() to revert back to this previous state. - bool thawUservars (string $USER\[, hash %OPTIONS\]) If the variables for `$USER` were previously frozen, this method will restore them to the state they were in when they were last frozen. It will then delete the stored cache by default. The following options are accepted as an additional hash of parameters (these options are mutually exclusive and you shouldn't use both of them at the same time. If you do, "discard" will win.): discard: Don't restore the user's state from the frozen copy, just delete the frozen copy. keep: Keep the frozen copy even after restoring the user's state. With this you can repeatedly thawUservars on the same user to revert their state without having to keep freezing them again. On the next freeze, the last frozen state will be replaced with the new current state. Examples: ```perl # Delete the frozen cache but don't modify the user's variables. $rs->thawUservars ("soandso", discard => 1); # Restore the user's state from cache, but don't delete the cache. $rs->thawUservars ("soandso", keep => 1); ``` - string lastMatch (string $USER) After fetching a reply for user `$USER`, the `lastMatch` method will return the raw text of the trigger that the user has matched with their reply. This function may return undef in the event that the user __did not__ match any trigger at all (likely the last reply was "`ERR: No Reply Matched`" as well). - string currentUser () Get the user ID of the current user chatting with the bot. This is mostly useful inside of a Perl object macro in RiveScript to get the user ID of the person who invoked the object macro (e.g., to get/set variables for them using the `$rs` instance). This will return `undef` if used outside the context of a reply (the value is unset at the end of the `reply()` method). ## INTERACTION - string reply (string $USER, string $MESSAGE) Fetch a response to `$MESSAGE` from user `$USER`. RiveScript will take care of lowercasing, running substitutions, and removing punctuation from the message. Returns a response from the RiveScript brain. # RIVESCRIPT This interpreter tries its best to follow RiveScript standards. Currently it supports RiveScript 2.0 documents. A current copy of the RiveScript working draft is included with this package: see [RiveScript::WD](http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?RiveScript::WD). # UTF-8 SUPPORT Version 1.29+ adds experimental support for UTF-8 in RiveScript. It is not enabled by default. Enable it by passing a true value for the `utf8` option in the constructor, or by using the `--utf8` argument to the `rivescript` application. By default (without UTF-8 mode on), triggers may only contain basic ASCII characters (no foreign characters), and the user's message is stripped of all characters except letters and spaces. This means that, for example, you can't capture a user's e-mail address in a RiveScript reply, because of the @ and . characters. When UTF-8 mode is enabled, these restrictions are lifted. Triggers are only limited to not contain certain metacharacters like the backslash, and the user's message is only stripped of backslashes and HTML angled brackets (to prevent obvious XSS if you use RiveScript in a web application). The `` tags in RiveScript will capture the user's "raw" input, so you can write replies to get the user's e-mail address or store foreign characters in their name. # CONSTANTS This module can export some constants. use RiveScript qw(:standard); These constants include: - RS_ERR_MATCH This is the reply text given when no trigger has matched the message. It equals "`ERR: No Reply Matched`". ```perl if ($reply eq RS_ERR_MATCH) { $reply = "I couldn't find a good reply for you!"; } ``` - RS_ERR_REPLY This is the reply text given when a trigger _was_ matched, but no reply was given from it (for example, the trigger only had conditionals and all of them were false, with no default replies to fall back on). It equals "`ERR: No Reply Found`". ```perl if ($reply eq RS_ERR_REPLY) { $reply = "I don't know what to say about that!"; } ``` # SEE ALSO [RiveScript::WD](http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?RiveScript::WD) - A current snapshot of the Working Draft that defines the standards of RiveScript. [http://www.rivescript.com/](http://www.rivescript.com/) - The official homepage of RiveScript. # CHANGES 1.36 - Relicense under the MIT License. - Strip punctuation from the bot's responses in UTF-8 mode to support compatibility with %Previous. - Bugfix in deparse(): If you had two matching triggers, one with a %Previous and one without, you'd lose the data for one of them in the output. 1.34 Feb 26 2014 - Update README.md to include module documentation for github. - Fixes to META.yml 1.32 Feb 24 2014 - Maintenance release to fix some errors per the CPANTS. - Add license to Makefile.PL - Make Makefile.PL not executable - Make version numbers consistent 1.30 Nov 25 2013 - Added "TCP Mode" to the `rivescript` command so that it can listen on a socket instead of using standard input and output. - Added a "--data" option to the `rivescript` command for providing JSON input as a command line argument instead of standard input. - Added experimental UTF-8 support. - Bugfix: don't use hacky ROT13-encoded placeholders for message substitutions... use a null character method instead. ;) - Make .rive the default preferred file extension for RiveScript documents instead of .rs (which conflicts with the Rust programming language). Backwards compatibility remains to load .rs files, though. 1.28 Aug 14 2012 - FIXED: Typos in RiveScript::WD (Bug #77618) - Added constants RS_ERR_MATCH and RS_ERR_REPLY. 1.26 May 29 2012 - Added EXE_FILES to Makefile.PL so the rivescript utility installs correctly. 1.24 May 15 2012 - Fixed: having a single-line, multiline comment, e.g. /* ... */ - Fixed: you can use and in triggers now, instead of only - and - - When a trigger consists of nothing but multiple wildcard symbols, sort the trigger by length, this way you can have '* * * * *' type triggers still work correctly (each tag would get one word, with the final collecting the remainder). - Backported new feature from Python lib: you can now use and to SET variables (eg. ). The {!...} tag is deprecated. - New feature: deparse() will return a Perl data structure representing all of the RiveScript code parsed by the module so far. This way you can build a user interface for editing replies without requiring a user to edit the code directly. - New method: write() will use deparse() to write a RiveScript document using all of the in-memory triggers/responses/etc. - Cleaned up the POD documentation, put POD code along side the Perl functions it documents, removed useless bloat from the docs. - POD documentation now only shows recent changes. For older changes, see the "CHANGES" file in the distribution. - Removed the `rsup` script from the distribution (it upgrades RiveScript 1.x code to 2.x; there probably isn't any 1.x code out in the wild anyway). 1.22 Sep 22 2011 - Cleaned up the documentation of RiveScript; moved the JavaScript object example to a separate document in the `docs' directory. - Obsoleted the `rsdemo` command that used to ship with the distribution. In its place is `rivescript`, which can also be used non-interactively so that a third party, non-Perl application could still make use of RiveScript. - RiveScript.pm is now dual licensed. It uses the GPLv2 for open source applications as before, but you can contact the author for details if you want to use RiveScript.pm in a closed source commercial application. 1.20 Jul 30 2009 - Added automatic syntax checking when parsing RiveScript code. Also added 'strict mode' - if true (default), a syntax error is a fatal error. If false, a syntax error is a warning, and RiveScript aborts processing the file any further. - Changed the behavior of "inherits" a bit: a new type has been added called "includes" which does what the old "inherits" does (mixes the trigger list of both topics together into the same pool). The new "inherits" option though causes the trigger list from the source topic to be higher in matching priority than the trigger list of the inherited topic. - Moving to a new versioning scheme: development releases will have odd version numbers, stable (CPAN) versions will have even numbers. - Fixed the Eliza brain; in many places a was used when there was only one star in the trigger. Fixes lots of issues with Eliza. - Bugfix: recursion depth limits weren't taken into account when the {@} tag was responsible for a redirection. Fixed. - Bugfix: there was a problem in the regular expression that counts real words while sorting triggers, so that triggers with *'s in them weren't sorted properly and would therefore cause matching issues. - Bugfix: when the internal _getreply is called because of a recursive redirection (@, {@}), the %previous tags should be ignored. They weren't. since "lastreply" is always the same no matter how deeply recursive _getreply is going, it could result in some infinite recursion in rare cases. Fixed. - Bugfix: using a reserved name as a global variable wasn't working properly and would crash RiveScript. Fixed. 1.19 Apr 12 2009 - Added support for defining custom object handlers for non-Perl programming languages. - All the methods like setGlobal, setVariable, setUservar, etc. will now accept undef or "" as values - this will delete the variables. - There are no reserved global variable names anymore. Now, if a variable name would conflict with a reserved name, it is put into a "protected" space elsewhere in the object. Still take note of which names are reserved though. 1.18 Dec 31 2008 - Added support for topics to inherit their triggers from other topics. e.g. > topic alpha inherits beta - Fixed some bugs related to !array with ^continue's, and expanded its functionality therein. - Updated the getUservars() function to optionally be able to get just a specific variable from the user's data. Added getUservar() as a grammatically correct alias to this new functionality. - Added the functions freezeUservars() and thawUservars() to back up and restore a user's variables. - Added the function lastMatch(), which returns the text of the trigger that matched the user's last message. - The # command for RiveScript comments has been deprecated in revision 7 of the RiveScript Working Draft. The Perl module will now emit warnings each time the # comments are processed. - Modified a couple of triggers in the default Eliza brain to improve matching issues therein. - +Triggers can contain user tags now. - Updated the RiveScript Working Draft. # AUTHOR Noah Petherbridge, http://www.kirsle.net # KEYWORDS bot, chatbot, chatterbot, chatter bot, reply, replies, script, aiml, alpha # COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE The MIT License (MIT) Copyright (c) 2014 Noah Petherbridge Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.