chatty-bot

Little framework to test and build Facebook Messenger Chatbots on Node

You can run your app from the command line

Before deploying

Getting Started

1. Create a node project

npm init

2. Install chatty-bot globally (so it can run from the command line)

npm install -g chatty-bot

Then add it to your current project

npm install -save chatty-bot

3. Create a file called app.js This is where your chat code goes. And copy this into it.

var app = {};

app.request = function(text, senderId, sendText, sendTemplateData){
  if(text.toLowerCase().indexOf('help') > -1){
    sendText('I can help you. Ask me a question.');
  } else if (text.toLowerCase().indexOf('?') > -1){
    sendTemplateData(createMsg());
  } else {
    sendText('Hello there ');
  }
};

app.postback = function(payload, senderId, sendText, sendTemplateData){
  if(payload === 'robot'){
    sendText('Hello comrade');
  }
  if(payload === 'human'){
    sendText('Human beings are a disease, a cancer on this planet, you are a plague, and we...are the cure.');
  }
}

function createMsg(){
  var messageData = {
      "attachment": {
          "type": "template",
          "payload": {
              "template_type": "generic",
              "elements": [{
                  "title": "Before we start",
                  "subtitle": "Are you a robot or a human?",
                  "image_url": "http://i.imgur.com/JD3ydzu.jpg",
                  "buttons": [{
                      "type": "postback",
                      "title": "Robot",
                      "payload": "robot",
                  },{
                      "type": "postback",
                      "title": "Human",
                      "payload": "human",
                  }],
              }]
          }
      }
  }
  return messageData;
}

module.exports = app;

The app is passed to the chatty-app cli and server, you just need to write implementations for app.request and app.postback.

Two functions: sendText and sendTemplateData are passed to the app. Call these to either send text or a structured message.

sendText('Hello there ');

4. On the command line type:

chattybot

And start chatting on the command line.

To select a structured template message type ~ followed by the title, followed by the button title. e.g.

~Before we start Human

5. To hook up your app to messenger, create a file called index.js And copy the code below into it.

var chattybot = require('chatty-bot')
var app = require('./app')

chattybot.listen(app,
  process.env.PORT || 5000,
  <YOUR PAGE ACCESS TOKEN>,
  <YOUR VERFIY TOKEN>);

Then deploy.

Help

Get the tokens from Facebook.

An excellent beginner's tutorial.

This is a new project so pull requests and issues welcome.

TODO

1. Add welcome message for a new thread

2. Pass sequence number to app