purple_ruby is a ruby gem to write servers that send and recive IM messages. It uses libpurple ( developer.pidgin.im/wiki/WhatIsLibpurple ) and therforce supports all protocols that Pidgin/Adium supports (MSN/Gtalk/Yahoo/AIM/ICQ etc).

Please check examples/purplegw_example.rb for details. Bascially you just tell it what to do when an IM was received, and there is an embedded tcp ‘proxy’ which allows you send IM messages.

Why not “ruburple”? I have used ruburple ( rubyforge.org/projects/ruburple ), but found it blocks a lot. libpurple needs to run its own event loop which interferes with ruby’s green thread model. Ruburple’s author has done lots of hard work to workaround the problem ( rubyforge.org/pipermail/ruburple-development/2007-June/000005.html ), but it does not work well.

Archlinux:

$ pacman -S libpurple
$ gem install purple_ruby

Ubuntu:

$ sudo apt-get install libpurple0 libpurple-dev
$ sudo gem install purple_ruby

Redhat/Centos

$ wget -O /etc/yum.repos.d/pidgin.repo http://rpm.pidgin.im/centos/pidgin.repo
$ yum -y install glib2-devel libpurple-devel
$ sudo gem install purple_ruby

OSX:

$ sudo port -d selfupdate
$ sudo port sync
$ sudo port upgrade --force installed
$ sudo port install gnutls
$ sudo port install nss
$ sudo port install intltool
$ sudo port install glib2
$ wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/pidgin/pidgin-2.6.1.tar.bz2
$ tar xvjf pidgin-2.6.1.tar.bz2
$ cd pidgin-2.6.1
$ ./configure --disable-gtkui --disable-screensaver --disable-consoleui --disable-sm --disable-perl --disable-tk --disable-tcl --disable-gstreamer --disable-schemas-install --disable-gestures --disable-cap --disable-gevolution --disable-gtkspell --disable-startup-notification --disable-avahi --disable-nm --disable-dbus --disable-meanwhile --disable-idn
$ cd libpurple
$ make
$ sudo make install

edit your ~/.bash_profile and add this line

export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=$PKG_CONFIG_PATH:/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig

Then compile our sources following this commands:

$ git clone git://github.com/Lipsiasoft/purple_ruby.git
$ cd purple_ruby
$ cd ext
$ export ARCHFLAGS="-arch x86_64"
$ ruby extconf.rb
$ make

Yong
Valodzka
Ghazel
DAddYE (LipsiaSoft)

purple_ruby is Copyright © 2009 Xue Yong Zhi and Intridea, Inc. ( intridea.com ), released under the GPL License.