How to build a chat bot with Flask, Pusher Channels and Dialogflow

This is a demo application showing how to build a Chat bot using Flask, Dialogflow and Pusher. You can read the tutorial on how it was built here

Getting Started

These instructions will get you a copy of the project up and running on your local machine for development and testing purposes.

Prerequisites

This tutorial uses the following:

• Python 3.6 (You should have python 3.6 or higher version installed)
• Pusher Channels (Create an account here or login here)
• JavaScript (jQuery)
• Dialogflow (Create an account here or login here)
• Ngrok (Download it here if you don't have it already)

Setting up the project

First of all, clone the repository to your local machine:

 $ git clone https://github.com/dongido001/flask_chatbot.git

Next, create your environment keys:

cp .env.example .env

There are couple of keys you need to set in the .env file. The next sections will show you how you can get these keys.

Pusher

Login to your Pusher account, create a new app and then get your API keys.

Next update the following keys in the .env file with the correct keys:

PUSHER_APP_ID=app_id
PUSHER_KEY=key
PUSHER_SECRET=secret
PUSHER_CLUSTER=cluster

Dialogflow

You also need to create a Dialogflow account. Create it here or login if you have an account already.

Next,

• Create a new agent called named Movie-bot
• Create an Intent named movie
• Create an Entity named movie
• Then enble the intent to use webhook
• Finally, on your Dialogflow console page, click on Fulfillment then enable webhook.

Now, get your Dialogflow API key. Head to Google cloud here

Then,

• Select Dialogflow integrations under Service account.
• Then select JSON under key type.
• Next, make sure at the top menu that our bot is selected as the project name - Movie-Bot
• Finally, click on the Create button to download the your API key

Your API key will be downloaded automatically. It's a JSON file.

Next, copy the downloaded file to the root folder of the project - flask_chatbot

Then, update the keys in the .env file with the correct information:

GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS=*.json
DIALOGFLOW_PROJECT_ID=project_id

Note

• *.json is the name of the JSON file you just copied to the root folder of the project.
• To get your project_id, open the JSON file with your code editor, you will see a field - "project_id". The value is your project_id

OMDb API key

We are using OMDb to fetch details of a movie. So you need to get an API key.

To get a free API access key, head to OMDb. Enter the required details, then submit the form. An email will be sent to you that contains your API key. You also need to activate your account from the email sent to you.

Once you have your key, update the information in the .env file with the correct detail:

OMDB_API_KEY=API_KEY

Running the App

To get the app running:

• From a command line, cd into the project root folder - flask_chatbot
• Creat a virtual environment:

python3 -m venv env

• Activate the virtual environment:

  source env/bin/activate

On windows? Activate it with the below:

  env/Scripts/activate

• Install the dependencies:

pip install -r requirements.txt

• Finally run the app:

 flask run

Congrats! The app should now be running on http://localhost:5000

Built With

• Flask - A microframework for Python
• Pusher - APIs to enable devs building realtime features
• Dialogflow A Google-owned developer of human–computer interaction technologies based on natural language conversations