rumors-fb-bot

A Facebook Messenger bot that checks if a message contains internet rumor.

State diagram & Documents

This is a one of the sub-project of Cofacts 真的假的.

This state diagram describes how the FB bot interacts with users:

Development

All hard-coded reply texts in source code are in Chinese and have translation in comments.

Please finish the following settings before starting development.

Facebook App and Facebook page

Please follow all the steps in Facebook Messenger Platform.

Note that we need permission manage_pages, publish_pages, Page Public Content Access, and pages_messaging for your app. Tests passed on 2019.11.1 using Graph API v3.3 and Send API v2.6.

Important: Please refer to this page for Facebook access tokens.

Environment variables

First, install heroku toolbelt.

Create .env file from .env.sample template, at least fill in:

API_URL=https://cofacts-api.g0v.tw/graphql (or your api server)
APP_ID=<your Facebook app ID>
PAGE_ACCESS_TOKEN=<paste your Facebook page access token from Graph API Explorer here>
VERIFY_TOKEN=<paste your token for webhook verification here>
APP_SECRET=<paste your Facebook app secret here>

Other customizable env vars are:

• LOCALE: Your locale for building with i18n. en_US is used if not given.
• REDIS_URL: If not given, redis://127.0.0.1:6379 is used.
• PORT: Which port the bot server will listen at.
• GOOGLE_DRIVE_IMAGE_FOLDER: Google drive folder id is needed when you want to test uploading image.
• GOOGLE_CREDENTIALS: will be populated by authGoogleDrive.js. See "Upload image/video" section below.
• GA_ID: Google analytics universal analytics tracking ID, for tracking events

Redis server

We use Redis to store conversation context / intents. Please run a Redis server on your machine, or use the Heroku Redis's REDIS_URL directly if you happen to deploy the bot to Heroku.

Node Dependencies

You will need Node.JS 8+ to proceed.

$ npm i

Get the bot server running on your local machine

With Heroku toolbelt installed, just do this:

$ heroku local

and the server will be started on localhost:5000. (Or the PORT you specified in your .env file.)

Get Facebook webhook events from your local machine

We recommend using localtunnel to create a public address that directs the traffic from Facebook server to your local machine. With localtunnel installed globally in your path, just execute

$ lt -s <custom subdomain> -p <port>

localtunnel will give you a public URL. Use this to set the webhook URL of your Page (See the tutorial in Facebook Messenger Platform).

Upload image/video

First, follow the step1 in this url to get client_secret.json and save it to project root.

Second, run:

$ node authGoogleDrive.js

Visit the given url provided above. Get the auth code and paste it to console. Then the program will save your google drive access token locally at GOOGLE_CREDENTIALS in .env.

Make sure you've also set GOOGLE_DRIVE_IMAGE_FOLDER = folderID in .env file.

ref:

OAuth2 Protocols

Googleapi Nodejs Client P.S. This page provide the newest api usage then this.

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Production Deployment

If you would like to start your own Facebook bot server in production environment, this section describes how you can deploy the bot to your own Heroku account.

Get the server running

You can deploy the Facebook bot server to your own Heroku account by creating a Heroku app and push to it.

Despite the fact that we don't use Procfile, Heroku still does detection and installs the correct environment for us.

Provision add-on "Heroku Redis"

Provision a Heroku Redis addon to get redis. It sets the env var REDIS_URL for you.

Configurations

You have to set the following config vars manually:

$ heroku config:set API_URL=https://cofacts-api.g0v.tw/graphql (or your api server)
$ heroku config:set SITE_URL=https://cofacts.g0v.tw
$ heroku config:set PAGE_ACCESS_TOKEN=<Your page access token from Graph API Explorer>
$ heroku config:set APP_ID=<Your Facebook app id>
$ heroku config:set VERIFY_TOKEN=<Your webhook verification token>
$ heroku config:set APP_SECRET=<Your Facebook app secret>
$ heroku config:set GOOGLE_CREDENTIALS=<Your google credential (optional)>

Note: To deploy a build with i18n, LOCALE needs to be set BEFORE the next deployment.

Google Analytics Events table

Sent event format: Event category / Event action / Event label

1. User sends a message to us

• UserInput / MessageType / <text | image | video | ...>

• For the time being, we only process message with "text" type. The following events only applies for text messages.

• If we found a articles in database that matches the message:

  • UserInput / ArticleSearch / ArticleFound
  • Article / Search / <article id> for each article found

• If the message does not look like those being forwarded in instant messengers:

  • UserInput / ArticleSearch / NonsenseText

• If nothing found in database:

  • UserInput / ArticleSearch / ArticleNotFound

2. User chooses a found article

• Article / Selected / <selected article id>
• If there are replies:
  • Reply / Search / <reply id> for each replies
• If there are no replies:
  • Article / NoReply / <selected article id>

3. User chooses a reply

• Reply / Selected / <selected reply id>
• Reply / Type / <selected reply's type>

4. User votes a reply

• UserInput / Feedback-Vote / <articleId>/<replyId>

5. User want to submit a new article

• Article / Create / Yes

6. User does not want to submit an article

• Article / Create / No

License

The project is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.