squery

Synopsis

/squery <servicename> <text>

Description

squery sends a message to a network service that uses the IRC service protocol. On a supporting server, servlist can show available services. The service determines which requests it accepts and what responses it sends.

The first whitespace-delimited argument is the service name; all remaining text is the message. With nonempty text, EPIC sends SQUERY servicename :text. It applies the target's outbound encoding rules to the text and the server's encoding to the command and target. There are no locally interpreted options.

This command sends SQUERY, rather than PRIVMSG. A network's service bots may instead expect msg, and their presence does not establish support for the IRC service protocol. Follow the service's instructions.

Restrictions and output

Supply an explicit service name and message. The shared C handler substitutes the current window's channel when the target is omitted or is *, falling back to literal * when there is no current channel. That fallback is not a useful service destination. With no text, EPIC sends SQUERY target without a trailing parameter. The client does not print a usage error or validate that the target is a service; the server may reject these requests.

Sending uses the current server context, with the primary server as a fallback when there is no current context. A closed selected connection normally produces a diagnostic through the disconnect hook; with no server record, nothing is sent. The normal sending layer applies outgoing mangling, IRC line-length truncation, and on send_to_server handling.

Unlike msg, this built-in does not perform normal message echo, invoke on send_msg, or update the last message destination. Server errors and service responses arrive asynchronously and are displayed or handled according to their received message types. There is no script return value. The command is always registered, but server and service support are required for useful results.

Example

To ask an irchelp service for help about private messages:

/squery irchelp help privmsg

This works only if that service exists and accepts this request syntax.

Source

Registration and send_2comm() are in source/commands.c; the shared handler has no special squery branch. Target-specific recoding is in source/recode.c, and server selection, payload formatting, and outgoing handling are in source/server.c. The conventional protocol is described in RFC 2812, section 3.5.2.