BslBot built using the Smooch Bot example

The purpose of this bot implementation is to show BSL Bot Scenario Language in action. Go test the bot in action on Messanger: http://m.me/1776083119303814

The original Smooch Bot code is here: https://github.com/smooch/smooch-bot-example

BSL is inspired by EstherBot: https://github.com/esthercrawford/EstherBot

Build Your Bot

Creating this version will give you a web based chat app. With a few integrations inside of Smooch (like Twilio) you can have your bot talking on other platforms too including SMS, Facebook, and Telegram.

Get Started:

1. First, sign up for a free account at smooch.io

2. With a new Smooch app created, go to the settings tab and take note of your App Token. Also, generate a new Secret Key, and take note of the key ID and secret.

   

3. Deploy your app to Heroku using the button below. It's a service for hosting apps so go sign up if you don't already have an account – it's free. You'll need to specify your app token, key ID, and secret in the app's SMOOCH_APP_TOKEN, SMOOCH_KEY_ID, and SMOOCH_SECRET config settings.

   

4. Your app should now be running on Heroku but you're not quite done yet. Take note of the URL where your heroku app is running, for example https://foo-bar-4242.herokuapp.com. You'll need to specify this in your heroku app SERVICE_URL config variable. You can do this in the Heroku control panel under Settings > Config Variables. Make sure to go under Deploy and connect to your GitHub repo. Then, enable Automatic Deploys from the master branch (this means anytime you make an edit to your bot's script, it'll automatically update and talk as intended in seconds.)

5. You should be all set. Open your Heroku app and start chatting with your new bot!

##Teach Your Bot To Talk Now that you have a bot you need to decide what it'll say. That's where the file script.bsl comes in. It's the document you need to edit to make your bot talk.

By clicking on the pencil icon you can edit the document.

Here is a short intro to BSL syntax:

###Start tag Start the main scenario, this part of scenario is executed then the used ineracts with the bot for the first time. Example:

START THE_NAME_OF_SCRIPT

###Say tag Just a simple text message. Example:

SAY "The message bot should say"

###ASK and SAVE tags Ask a question, the ASK should be followed by SAVE, to save the answer in a variable for the later use.

ASK "What is your name?"
SAVE name

###END tag End main scenario, or other scenario

END

###SCENARIO tag Start a new scenario. you can use unlimited number of strings to invoke a scenario. Syntax:

SCENARIO NAME_OF_SCENARIO "invoke_by_string_1" "invoke_by_string_2" "invoke_by_string_3"

Example:

SCENARIO  HELP "help" "?" "h" "menu" "help me"

###Saved variable To use a saved Variable (by SAVE tag) use this syntax:

SAY       "Great! ${name} from ${from}. What you want to do?"

###Postback button To create a button use this syntax:

SAY       "Want learn more? %[Text on button](postback:follow_this_scenario_on_click)"

you have to have a scenario invocable by the postback string. Example:

SCENARIO  CREATOR "creator" "follow_this_scenario_on_click"

###Image To post an image, use this syntax:

SAY       "Here is a picture. ![pic1](http://url.com/to_image.jpg)"

###Link To post a link, use this:

SAY       "My LinkedIn %[LinkedIn Profile](https://www.linkedin.com/in/rimavicius)"

##Bring it altogether Open script.bsl for a full example.

##Bonus Open the Smooch control panel and add more integrations. You can add new user channels like Twilio SMS, or you can add Slack or HipChat which will let you join in on the conversation along side your bot. Pretty neat!

Troubleshooting your bot

Is your bot misbehaving? Not working? Here are some steps you can follow to figure out what's going wrong.

Warning: command line instructions incoming. You may not be accustomed to using the command line but don't worry, it's much easier than you think.

Check your bot's logs on heroku

If there's a bug in your code, checking the heroku logs is the best way to figure out what's going wrong. Here's how:

1. Install the heroku toolbelt: https://toolbelt.heroku.com/ These are power tools that let you do a lot more than what Heroku dashboard alone allows.

2. Next, open your preferred terminal app. On OSX the default Terminal app will work fine here.

3. Log in to the heroku toolbelt with the following command:

    heroku login
   

   If the command heroku isn't found, try restarting your terminal app. Once logged in you should be able to list all of your heroku apps like so:

    heroku apps
   

   which should give you something like this:

    $ heroku apps
    === My Apps
    your-app
   

4. Now you can check the logs of your heroku app like so:

    heroku logs -a your-app
   

   This will give you a dump of your most recent app logs. They will look something like the following. Can you spot the error below?

    2016-05-09T14:08:34.966358+00:00 heroku[slug-compiler]: Slug compilation started
    2016-05-09T14:08:34.966363+00:00 heroku[slug-compiler]: Slug compilation finished
    2016-05-09T14:08:34.946344+00:00 heroku[web.1]: State changed from up to starting
    2016-05-09T14:08:34.945605+00:00 heroku[web.1]: Restarting
    2016-05-09T14:08:37.860802+00:00 heroku[web.1]: Stopping all processes with SIGTERM
    2016-05-09T14:08:39.493078+00:00 heroku[web.1]: Process exited with status 143
    2016-05-09T14:08:41.182450+00:00 heroku[web.1]: Starting process with command `npm start`
    2016-05-09T14:08:45.818995+00:00 app[web.1]:
    2016-05-09T14:08:45.819017+00:00 app[web.1]: > smooch-bot-example@1.0.0 start /app
    2016-05-09T14:08:45.819018+00:00 app[web.1]: > node heroku
    2016-05-09T14:08:45.819019+00:00 app[web.1]:
    2016-05-09T14:08:46.601444+00:00 app[web.1]: module.js:433
    2016-05-09T14:08:46.601454+00:00 app[web.1]:     throw err;
    2016-05-09T14:08:46.601455+00:00 app[web.1]:     ^
    2016-05-09T14:08:46.601456+00:00 app[web.1]:
    2016-05-09T14:08:46.601457+00:00 app[web.1]: SyntaxError: /app/script.json: Unexpected token }
    2016-05-09T14:08:46.601458+00:00 app[web.1]:     at Object.parse (native)
    2016-05-09T14:08:46.601458+00:00 app[web.1]:     at Object.Module._extensions..json (module.js:430:27)
    2016-05-09T14:08:46.601459+00:00 app[web.1]:     at Module.load (module.js:357:32)
    2016-05-09T14:08:46.601460+00:00 app[web.1]:     at Function.Module._load (module.js:314:12)
    2016-05-09T14:08:46.601460+00:00 app[web.1]:     at Module.require (module.js:367:17)
    2016-05-09T14:08:46.601461+00:00 app[web.1]:     at require (internal/module.js:20:19)
    2016-05-09T14:08:46.601462+00:00 app[web.1]:     at Object.<anonymous> (/app/script.js:6:21)
    2016-05-09T14:08:46.601473+00:00 app[web.1]:     at Module._compile (module.js:413:34)
    2016-05-09T14:08:46.601474+00:00 app[web.1]:     at Object.Module._extensions..js (module.js:422:10)
    2016-05-09T14:08:46.601474+00:00 app[web.1]:     at Module.load (module.js:357:32)
   

   Did you notice the SyntaxError part? It looks like there's a problem in my script.json. If I inspect that file in github I'll see that indeed, I have a stray comma at the end if the second to last line.

   

   After I remove that comma and redeploy, everything will return to normal.

How do I deploy my fixes to Heroku?

Great question! Now that you've found your bug and fixed it, you want to redeploy your app. With Heroku you can trigger a deployment using git. Without going into detail, git is a code versioning system it's where github gets its name. Git is the software, github.com is a separate company that hosts git code repositories. If you're using a Mac you should already have git installed. Although git is a very complex tool, it's worth learning if you're eager, but for this guide's purposes we'll be using only the most basic concepts of git, pulling changes from a remote github repository, commiting changes, and then pushing those changes out to a remote repository.

1. To deploy using git you first have to download a copy of your heroku app's code, like so:

    git clone https://github.com/your-github-username/your-app
   

   Note that git will prompt you to enter your github credentials.

2. This will create a new git copy of your code in a new folder. You can go into that folder like so:

    cd your-app
   

3. Now you can use the heroku toolbelt to link this git copy up to your heroku app with the following command:

    heroku git:remote -a your-app
   

4. Once that's done, you can now deploy to heroku directly from this directory. If you've made any fixes on github directly, be sure to sync them here like so:

    git pull origin master
    git push heroku master
   

5. You can also make changes to your local copy of the code. To do this, edit whatever file you wish in your preferred text editor, and then commit and push them up to github. You'll add a commit message, which is a short sentence decribing what you changed.

    git commit -a -m 'Your commit message'
    git push origin master
   

   Then, you can deploy those changes to heroku in the same way:

    git push heroku master