+++ title = "Parakeet: an IRC log renderer" date = "2021-08-09" author = "Aloïs Micard" authorTwitter = "" #do not include @ cover = "" tags = ["My Projects", "Golang"] keywords = ["", ""] description = "Generate beautiful HTML static files from IRC logs." showFullContent = false +++ I have started using a lot IRC lately since I became a [Debian Developer](https://wiki.debian.org/DebianDeveloper) (Debian use a lot IRC and mailing lists to communicate). For those who don't know what IRC is: it's basically the ancestor of modern chat messaging like [Discord](https://discord.com/). IRC is a quite old piece of technology, coming from 1988. One big drawbacks of IRC is that there's no such thing as a history, you need to be connected to receive the messages, everything that happens when your offline will be missed. Because of such limitation, people started using [Bouncer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BNC_(software)#IRC) or self-hosted IRC client such as [The lounge](https://thelounge.chat/). These clients are always connected to the IRC channels in order to allow the user to read the messages sent while he is away. I'm personally using a self-hosted **The lounge** on my dedicated server. The lounge is storing the logs history on the filesystem under `/var/opt/thelounge/logs/{username}/{server}/*.log` files. The log files looks like this: ``` 2021-03-29T13:16:36.853Z] *** creekorful (~creekorful@0002a854.user.oftc.net) joined [2021-03-29T14:09:34.402Z] *** fvcr (~francisco@2002c280.user.oftc.net) quit (Server closed connection) [2021-03-29T14:09:45.237Z] *** fvcr (~francisco@2002c280.user.oftc.net) joined [2021-03-29T15:07:10.843Z] *** Maxi[m] (~m189934ma@00027b5d.user.oftc.net) quit (Server closed connection) [2021-03-29T15:07:15.415Z] *** Maxi[m] (~m189934ma@00027b5d.user.oftc.net) joined [2021-03-31T11:44:01.184Z] If a pipeline in my namespace failed to build, does it mean it that only me get the e-mail for the failed build or the project I forked from too ? [2021-03-31T11:53:03.597Z] should be only you [2021-03-31T11:53:49.045Z] plus I think it's only the person triggering the pipeline, not the whole project [2021-03-31T12:22:27.901Z] *** sergiodj (~sergiodj@00014bc9.user.oftc.net) quit (Server closed connection) [2021-03-31T12:23:42.039Z] *** sergiodj (~sergiodj@00014bc9.user.oftc.net) joined [2021-03-31T14:35:02.708Z] Thanks Myon ``` I was wondering: *maybe a could render these log file into something more visual?* # Parakeet I built [Parakeet](https://github.com/creekorful/parakeet) (in Golang) to solve this issue. Using it is a simple as: `./parakeet -input irc-log.log -output irc-log.html` ## How does it work? ### Parsing the log file The tool first parse the provided log file, and extract the messages from it, while excluding all login / logout events. ```go for { line, err = rd.ReadString('\n') if err != nil { break } line = strings.TrimSuffix(line, "\n") // Only keep 'message' line i.e which contains something like '] ' if !strings.Contains(line, "] <") || !strings.Contains(line, ">") { continue } // Approximate line parsing date := line[1:strings.Index(line, "] <")] username := line[strings.Index(line, "<")+1 : strings.Index(line, ">")] content := line[strings.Index(line, "> ")+2:] t, err := time.Parse(time.RFC3339, date) if err != nil { break } ch.Messages = append(ch.Messages, Message{ Time: t, Sender: username, Content: content, }) } ``` ### Rendering the messages Thanks to the go [html/template](https://pkg.go.dev/html/template) package, it's fairly easy to generate HTML. The template file looks like this: ``` {{ .Name }} {{ range .Messages }}

[{{ .Time.Format "2006-01-02 15:04:05" }}] {{ .Sender | colorUsername }} {{ .Content | applyUrl }}

``` #### Assign color to the username Here's a little trick I've done to assign a color to each username, making the log files easier to read. ```go type Context struct { Colors []string Users map[string]string } func (c *Context) colorUsername(s string) template.HTML { // check if username color is not yet applied color, exist := c.Users[s] if !exist { // pick-up new random color for the username color = c.Colors[rand.Intn(len(c.Colors)-1)] c.Users[s] = color } return template.HTML(fmt.Sprintf("<%s>", color, s)) } ``` #### Make links clickable And here's how I've made the links clickable, by making them HTML anchor. I've used [github.com/mvdan/xurls](https://github.com/mvdan/xurls) to find the URLs. ```go func (c *Context) applyURL(s string) template.HTML { rxStrict := xurls.Strict() return template.HTML(rxStrict.ReplaceAllStringFunc(s, func(s string) string { return fmt.Sprintf("%s", s, s) })) } ``` # Conclusion I'm using this tool to mirror the logs for the channel I'm using. The results are available [here](https://irc-logs.creekorful.org/) and updated daily. Happy hacking!