RiveScript - Rendering Intelligence Very Easily
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.rs");
# 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 = <STDIN>);
my $reply = $rs->reply ('localuser',$msg);
print "Bot> $reply\n";
}
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/
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).
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.
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 ('.rs').
Returns true on success, false on failure.
Load a single RiveScript document. $PATH should be the path to a valid
RiveScript file. Returns true on success; false otherwise.
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.
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.
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.
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:
{
"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
"<get name> != undefined => Hello <get name>!",
...
],
},
},
},
"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).
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.
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 <call> 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 <call> 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:
$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.
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.
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 "<undef>". This
is true for variables, substitutions, person, and uservars.
Set one or more bot variables (things that describe your bot's personality).
This is equivalent to ! var in RiveScript code.
Set one or more substitution patterns. The keys should be the original word, and the value should be the word to substitute with it.
$rs->setSubstitution (
q{what's} => 'what is',
q{what're} => 'what are',
);
This is equivalent to ! sub in RiveScript code.
Set a person substitution. This is equivalent to ! person in RiveScript code.
Set a variable for a user. $USER should be their User ID, and %DATA is a
hash containing variable/value pairs.
This is like <set> for a specific user.
This is an alias for getUservars, and is here because it makes more grammatical sense.
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 <get> for a specific user or for all users.
Clears all variables about $USER. If no $USER is provided, clears all
variables about all users.
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.
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:
# 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);
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).
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.
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 the RiveScript::WD manpage.
the RiveScript::WD manpage - A current snapshot of the Working Draft that defines the standards of RiveScript.
http://www.rivescript.com/ - The official homepage of RiveScript.
1.24 May 15 2012
- Fixed: having a single-line, multiline comment, e.g. /* ... */
- Fixed: you can use <input> and <reply> in triggers now, instead of only
<input1>-<input9> and <reply1>-<reply9>
- 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 <star> tag would get one word, with the final
<star> collecting the remainder).
- Backported new feature from Python lib: you can now use <bot> and <env>
to SET variables (eg. <bot mood=happy>). 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 <star2> 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 "<undef>" 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 <get> tags now.
- Updated the RiveScript Working Draft.
Noah Petherbridge, http://www.kirsle.net
bot, chatbot, chatterbot, chatter bot, reply, replies, script, aiml, alpha
The Perl RiveScript interpreter is dual licensed as of version 1.22. For open source applications the module is using the GNU General Public License. If you'd like to use the RiveScript module in a closed source or commercial application, contact the author for more information.
RiveScript - Rendering Intelligence Very Easily Copyright (C) 2011 Noah Petherbridge
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA