An open relay for thimbl

I am experimenting with ideas in open social networking - thimbl has caught my attention the last few weeks. I have activated the finger daemon on my EC2 account. You can find the latest tweet by doing
   finger ossa@nummo.strangled.net

I have also devised an open relay for thimbl. Anyone can now make a microblog post, using only telnet. You can explore it right now (where now is defined as 23-Oct-2010, 18:19) as I have the open relay set up on my server. Here's what you do:
   telnet nummo.strangled.net 2993

You can type
   rece
to see the last 10 tweets. You can add your own tweet using the "say" command. For example:
   say hello from the internet
Type "rece" again, and you should see your post. When you've have enough, type
   quit

For further proof that it's worked, type
    finger ossa@nummo.strangled.net
and you should see your post.

The code behind it (VERY hacky):

#!/usr/bin/env tclsh

# Run this open relay server using
# retweet.tcl

# Example usage from the 'client' perspective:
# telnet localhost 2993
# C: OK Retweet says hello
# S: rece                           <-- obtain a list of recent posts
# C: blah blah 1
# C: ...
# C: OK Done
# C: say i don't care what i say    <-- create a posting
# S: OK Done
# C: quit                           <-- quit the server



# socketry taken from
# http://www.tcl.tk/about/netserver.html

#fconfigure 0 -buffering line -blocking 0
#fconfigure 1 -buffering line -blocking 0

proc out { text } {
    puts 1 $text
    flush 1
}

# out "OK Retweet says hello"


proc in {} {
    gets 0 inp
    return $inp
}


proc handle_input {out inp} {


    if {[regexp {^say (.+)} $inp _ tweet]} {

 # write the tweet to a file
 set f1 [open "tweets" "a"]
        puts $f1 $tweet
        close $f1


 # save the tweet in .plan
        set f1 [open ".plan" "w"]
        puts $f1 $tweet
        close $f1

 puts $out "OK Done"
 #flush stdout
 return
    }

    if {[regexp {^rece} $inp]} {
 set f1 [open "| tail tweets" "r"]
        puts $out [read $f1]
        close $f1
 puts $out "OK Done"
 #flush stdout
 return
    }


    if {$inp == "help"} {
 puts $out "Commands: help quit rece say"
 puts $out "OK Done"
 #flush stdout
 return
    }


    if {$inp == "quit"} {
 puts $out "OK Quitting"
 #flush stdout
 close $out
 return
    }

    puts $out "FAIL Didn't understand command"
    #flush stdout

}



# Echo_Server --
#Open the server listening socket
#and enter the Tcl event loop
#
# Arguments:
#portThe server's port number

proc Echo_Server {port} {
    set s [socket -server EchoAccept $port]
    vwait forever
}

# Echo_Accept --
#Accept a connection from a new client.
#This is called after a new socket connection
#has been created by Tcl.
#
# Arguments:
#sockThe new socket connection to the client
#addrThe client's IP address
#portThe client's port number

proc EchoAccept {sock addr port} {
    global echo

    # Record the client's information

    puts "Accept $sock from $addr port $port"
    set echo(addr,$sock) [list $addr $port]

    # Ensure that each "puts" by the server
    # results in a network transmission

    fconfigure $sock -buffering line
    puts $sock "OK Greetings from fritter"

    # Set up a callback for when the client sends data

    fileevent $sock readable [list Echo $sock]
}

# Echo --
#This procedure is called when the server
#can read data from the client
#
# Arguments:
#sockThe socket connection to the client

proc Echo {sock} {
    global echo

    # Check end of file or abnormal connection drop,
    # then echo data back to the client.

    if {[eof $sock] || [catch {gets $sock line}]} {
 close $sock
 puts "Close $echo(addr,$sock)"
 unset echo(addr,$sock)
    } else {
 handle_input $sock $line
 #puts $sock $line
    }
}

Echo_Server 2993
 
 
To run it, do the following:
 
cd ~
echo first post >~/.plan
echo first post >~/tweets 
tclsh retweet.tcl

You may want to combine it with the nohup command so that it isn't killed.

The code is also avialabe for download .