Bots

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What is a bot?

Any type of autonomous software that operates as an agent for a user or a program or simulates a human activity.
(From the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing)

As for any other messaging protocol, you can write bots that connect to group chats and interact with users. However, you are not bound to chat-like verbal interaction: you can deploy both the bot and an application-specific graphic user interface in the form of a web document (HTML, SVG, XUL).

When do you need a bot

A bot can help you when you need logic in your application that does not come from users. Example: in monopoly the user needs to roll a dice but having the client side javascript do it would allow cheating. In this case letting the bot roll the dice for the user is a good solution.

Writing a bot

The agent library makes it easy to implement an agent (bot) in Ruby for your xmpp4moz applications. An example of bot is monopoly's bill.

Any language where an XMPP library is available can be used to implement bots. A list of XMPP libraries can be found at http://www.jabber.org/software/libraries.shtml.