Wierd IRC/PHP/? question...

[Ankheg]

*Nix operating systems? PHP scripting? Website technology? Webmaster general? Where do I ask... ah, buggrit, I'll stick it in foo. :)

Anyone familiar with an *easy* way to display the number of people in a specific IRC channel, on a webpage? Is it impossible, ridiculously difficult, or has it been done lots of times before? A customer's site uses an IRC channel for the visitors to chat (their insistance, not my idea...), and they want some way to show, on the site, "There are X people in chat right now". Aaargh. I'm hoping someone's got an easy answer, 'cos I'm plenty stumped. I expect a bot is going to be involved somewhere, and some PHP at the end, but everything in between is very vague - this is uncharted territory for me. Thanks in advance for any ideas/thoughts/sympathy... :)

[bilalak]

There is a library for PHP-IRC
or just use the socket function to send and get back IRC protocol directive.

It is easy if you look on google for IRC + PHP