Haskbot

An easily-extensible, Haskell-based Slack chatbot

The purpose of this little bot is to provide:

• a slew of mini-services for Bendyworks
• a simple platform for Bendyworkers to learn Haskell
• a playground for exciting Haskell web modules, such as WAI, Warp, and Aeson

This README only demonstrates how to setup a Haskell dev environment for creating Haskbot plugins. Further documentation can be found on Hackage.

New to Haskell?

I find enjoyment of Haskell is greatly increased by a thorough reading of the first few chapters of Learn You a Haskell.... Of course, I highly recommend the entire book when you've time.

If you're an in-house Bendyworker, I'm also available before/after hours or during growth time to help or answer any questions.

Installing the Haskell Platform and Haskbot

To run Haskbot locally, all you require is the latest Haskell platform. If your distro of choice isn't Debian, this means your package manager probably provides it for you.

1. Run the following to install the platform:

   • On Ubuntu

     sudo apt-get update
     sudo apt-get install haskell-platform

   • On OSX (via Homebrew)

     brew update
     brew install haskell-platform

If instead you compile from source, be sure to add the GHC bin directory to your path!

2. Add Cabal's (the Haskell package manager) bin folder to your shell's $PATH. This is usually done by adding the following lines to ~/.profile or ~/.bash_profile (whichever you have/prefer).

   PATH="$HOME/.cabal/bin:$PATH"
   export PATH

   Make sure to re-source whatever file contains the new $PATH, like so:

   source ~/.profile

3. Update the Haskell packages via:

   cabal update
   cabal install cabal-install
   cabal install haskbot-core

Creating Plugins

You're now ready to begin creating plugins for your very own Haskbot! Continue on to Hackage for a full Haskbot API description and examples.

Thanks

I couldn't have completed this without the guidance provided by Chris Wilson. I've learned as much from our conversations on Haskell and functional programming as I have from any book.

I wouldn't have had time to write this without the growth time supplied by Bendyworks. Hey, employers! This is what developers need to survive.

Finally, I never would have discovered Haskell had Rob Jones not jokingly told me to build a web service using Snap when I stated that I wanted to branch out from Ruby. Gaze upon your works, ye mighty!

License

See LICENSE.txt