The easiest way to get it is via npm

npm install irc

If you want to run the latest version (i.e. later than the version available via npm) you can clone this repo, then use npm to link-install it:

npm link /path/to/your/clone

Of course, you can just clone this, and manually point at the library itself, but I really recommend using npm!

This library provides basic IRC client functionality. In the simplest case you can connect to an IRC server like so:

var irc = require('irc');
var client = new irc.Client('irc.dollyfish.net.nz', 'myNick', {
    channels: ['#blah'],
});

Of course it's not much use once it's connected if that's all you have!

The client emits a large number of events that correlate to things you'd normally see in your favourite IRC client. Most likely the first one you'll want to use is:

client.addListener('message', function (from, to, message) {
    sys.puts(from + ' => ' + to + ': ' + message);
});

or if you're only interested in messages to the bot itself:

client.addListener('pm', function (from, message) {
    sys.puts(from + ' => ME: ' + message);
});

or to a particular channel:

client.addListener('message#yourchannel', function (from, message) {
    sys.puts(from + ' => #yourchannel: ' + message);
});

At the moment there are functions for joining:

client.join('#yourchannel');

parting:

client.part('#yourchannel');

and talking:

client.say('#yourchannel', 'I'm a bot!');

For any other commands you might want to send to the server you can use the send() message which sends raw messages to the server:

client.send('MODE', '#yourchannel', '+o', 'yournick');

All commands and events are documented in API.md (hopefully). I hope to make a more complete set of events/commands over the next few weeks.