Reviewing Facebook API for bot development

User Interaction

• A Facebook bot is hosted by the messenger platform of a specific facebook page.
• A bot may only converse with a user if the user starts a conversation with it.
• The bot can also send images, video, audio & other files.
• The bot can also open a web view enabling features which are difficult via text alone such as choosing seats in a cinema.

API

• The messenger platform provides a REST API. The bot can receive messages & send them (aka react to them).
• Facebook provides an NLP API named wit.api
• There are many more API's provided by Facebook for bot creation.

Messages

The conversation with the bot is in the form of HTTP packets. Each message it receives from a user is translated to a POST request with the PSID identifying the sender. The bot can choose to react to many other events besides incoming messages such as echo messages and more.

Development

In order to develop a Facebook bot, one must possess a valid facebook app ID and sign up as a developer. Then, one needs to connect the messenger of a page to a specific URL. The aforementioned URL is a callback and will receive an HTTP message each time the bot is interacted with.

Supposedly, it is possible to direct to wit.api analysis to that URL as well. Making the development as portable and flexible as possible.

example starter bot https://github.com/hartleybrody/fb-messenger-bot/