[Axe]

If you actually own the IRC server, or have access to add servers to the IRC network (as opposed to just having a channel on somebody's network), it might be worth looking into Thales.

I've been using it on our site for a couple of months now. It basically hooks up to the network, and for all intents & purposes, it's just another IRC server on the network, like Bahamut or IRC services.

The only difference is that it doesn't accept users. It stores live data regarding all the channels & users in a MySQL database, then you can just use standard queries to call the information.

If you don't have access to add servers, perhaps you could contact the people who do run the network and see if they want to install it and make some kind of web-based API so you can grab information and parse it out in your own scripts (something I've done with Thales so users who run channels on my server can call the live information regarding their channel and publish it on their own sites).

Here's a live example of it running.

http://chat.reptilerap.com <-- The URL of the main chat site, scripts directly querying the database.

ReptileRooms.com Chat Page <-- URL of an external site that has no access to the database, yet manages to show the channel information through the web-based API I wrote.

I can't remember the URL off-hand, but just go to google and search for "Thales IRC" and it'll come up on the first page of results