Bot

Bots are cool - they listen for input in the form of messages from conversations, and then output text back to the user. They extend from a participant, so everything you can do with that can be done with a bot.

Let's make a bot that agrees with the user. I'll be using this wit app, although you can always set one up for yourself.

1. Let's create the class. It should extend from WitBot::Bot::Base:

   class Bot < WitBot::Bot::Base
   end

2. Now, let's have the bot listen to intents. Let's use the :Test intent I setup

   class Bot < WitBot::Bot::Base
     intents :Test
   end

3. To accept this intent, we just create a method, interpreting the message and sending a response with #send_message:

   protected
   def on_Test(message)
     outcome = message.outcome
   
     thing = outcome.entities["thing"]
     adjective = outcome.entities["adjective"]
   
     msg = "Yup, that #{thing || 'thing'} is #{adjective || 'a word'}."
     send_message msg
   end

4. To create an instance of the bot, you pass a [conversation].

   conversation = WitBot::Bot::Conversation::Base.new # Create a conversation
   bot = Bot.new conversation # Create the bot

5. Now, send the conversation a message, and the bot will reply.

   conversation.send_message "This is a cool test."

On Rails? Use the bot generator:

$ rails g wit_bot:bot BotName [intents]

You can check out the example for more info.