From: Brian Candler <b.candler@...>
Date: 2010-08-09T23:56:56+09:00
Subject: Re: Is there any human talkable ruby library?

Sniper Abandon wrote:
> i have a rails project which should talk to humans.
> i know it is not as much easy to do that.
> so i planned to integrate any good ChatBot with my rails(obviously ruby) 
> code

If you have a stateless Eliza program - one whose answers don't depend 
on any previous answers or messages typed in - which runs as a console 
app, then it should be easy. Open the program using IO.popen, send it a 
message, get a response, kill it, return the response to the user.

If there is state in the conversation, then it's more difficult, because 
HTTP is a stateless protocol. You could keep a pool of Elizas, and the 
one you're talking to would be identified by a HTTP cookie, say. Then 
you'd have to kill any idle conversations.

If this is your first Rails project, then you might be biting off rather 
a lot.

If you can find an existing Ruby Eliza, that would be your easiest 
solution. If it's stateless then you just call it; if it's stateful then 
you keep the state in a session object.
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