advice on bot programming

hello folks

just looking for some advice on programming intelligent agents or bots.....

basically i know about sites like botspot which give an incredibly big resource of bots however i want to learn how to make bots for one i have in mind, i have some basic sql knowledge so i reckon i can do this.

if any of you know any good resources online detailing how to go about creating bots, books on the same, discussion forums where i could pose this question etc etc i would be very greatfull if you could pass on this information to me here.

thanks in advance
a+
gar

Hi Garrett,
I think you'll have a lot of fun looking at this site.
They have agent development tools, java api's and all manner of stuff... some of it free too I think

mm only an evaluation version of their software, want to try and keep this away from having to use applications to make my bot and more using perl or cgi etc to develop the bot.

keep em coming

a+
gar

If you're looking to create web bots, check out perl and the LWP suite of modules on the cpan- you can create automated "virtual browsers" that you can download pages and submit forms (even file uploads!) with.

I've had A LOT of fun with these. . . I've written a script that looks up phone numbers online from names and addresses, another that crawls one site, downloads the data, and then posts the data back to a different site, as a way to migrate data from Lotus Notes to a real platform (mod_perl and MySQL).

Perl is definitely the way to go if you're looking to write web bots. You COULD do it in any number of languages, but LWP is so incredibly powerful you'd be foolish to reinvent the wheel.

that sounds good so can you recommend any sites or books where i can learn these??

a+
gar

You could also take a look at Alice AI project http://www.alicebot.org/ , there is a java and a php version.
Hope this helps

yep i know of alice and elisa, have standalone versions here, but i did'nt know alice existed in a php version which is very interesting to me as i already know php. so i'll have a look at that now.

thanks
gar

I just found a great book called "Bot Programming: Intelligent Automation For Windows Applications And Games"

The bots are written in VB.net and within a week I was creating bots to automate Windows application and games.

The Following Windows Automations Are Covered:
* Left And Right Mouse Clicks With Millisecond Timing
* Set Focus On Specific Applications
* Application Specific Mouse Clicks With Millisecond Timing
* Send Individual Key Strokes With Timing Control
* Send Multiple Keys Stokes Without Timing
* Starting Remote Applications
* Resize Remote Applications
* Run Automated Bots With Windows Scheduled Tasks
* Perform Screen Captures
* Use Pixel Recognition For Intelligent Decisions
* Applications and Games Botted: Windows Notepad, Windows Calculator, Windows Explorer, Firefox, 3D Pinball for Windows, Flash Games World Of Pain And Hero's Arms

Hope that helps.

I want to make a webbot that will scan stats on nba.com to help me bet on games i have no computer programing experience where should i begin. where would i learn php