YouPin Chat Bot

Setting up your FB Messenger Bot

To run FB Messenger Bot, it requires Facebook App and Facebook Page.

Our YouPin Bot uses the followings:

• YouPin App, linked to the official YouPin Page
• YouPin Test App (for development/testing), linked to the YouPin Test Page

If you fork this repo or try to run locally, you need to create a new Facebook App and/or Page first.

You can follow the instructions provided here: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/messenger-platform/quickstart. But you can skip step 2 (Webhooks), we will be back with Webhooks in the next section.

You should copy the App Secret and Page Access Token. We will use them in our config file.

Run Bot in Local Environment

1. Clone this repo.

git clone https://github.com/youpin-city/youpin-bot.git.

2. Install docker.

3. Start API with MongoDB containers.

docker-compose up -d api

4. Create a user account for your bot

curl -X POST localhost:9100/users -H 'Content-type: application/json' -d '{"name":"<your_name>","password":"<your_password>","email":"<your_email>","role":"user"}'.

It will return _id of your user.

<your_email>, <your_password>, and _id will be used in step 6.

5. Make a copy of config/default.json and rename it to config/development.json.

6. Modify content of config/development.json with your created user account info and Facebook app/page secret.

   {
     "appSecret": "<your_facebook_app_secret>",
     "pageAccessToken": "<your_facebook_page_access_token>",
     "validationToken": "<whatever, it will be used later>",
     "sessionMaxLength": 600000,
     "apiUri": "http://api:9100",
     "apiUsername": "<your_email>",
     "apiPassword": "<your_password>",
     "apiUserId": "<_id>"
   }

7. Start the bot container.

docker-compose up -d bot

8. Install ngrok to help Facebook connect to localhost

npm install -g ngrok

9. Start ngrok for tunneling.

ngrok http 5100

It will print

Tunnel Status online
Update update available (version 2.1.3, Ctrl-U to update)
Version           2.1.1
Region            United States (us)
Web Interface     http://127.0.0.1:4040
Forwarding        http://<id>.ngrok.io -> localhost:5100
Forwarding        https://<id>.ngrok.io -> localhost:5100
Connections       ttl     opn     rt1     rt5     p50     p90
                   0       0       0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00

Copy your https://<id>.ngrok.io to tell Facebook to connect. (Must be https not just http).

10. Go to your created Facebook app. Under Products section, +Add Product and choose Webhooks.

Enter your https://<id>.ngrok.io/webhook into Callback URL.

Enter your validationToken in Step 6. into Verify token.

Select message_deliveries, messages, messaging_optins, and messaging_postbacks.

Click Verify and save. The window will be closed automatically.

Note: If the verfication fails, it be might caused by

  1) validationToken is not matched.

  2) ngrok does not start.

  3) API docker container fails to start.

11. Let's say hello to your bot in your created Facebook page. Enjoy!

youpin-api.js

This wrapper module provides functions for posting Pins and uploading photos using youpin-api. See the repo for more info regarding the API.

• Implement functions for other available API calls and share this module with youpin-web.
• Implement more advanced functions involving the API, such as retrieving potential duplicated Pins (#10). (But maybe this should be done in the backend, so that the web counter part can also use it.)

messenger.js

This wrapper module provides commonly used functions for creating and sending messages via Facebook Messenger.

conversation.js

This module manages conversation context for each user, e.g., whether he or she has posted a photo. The current implementation is super hacky. We should switch to Redis for in-memory data storage (#4).

youpin.js

This module implements conversation logics for the bot. There are a lot of easy improvements we can potentially implement to make the bot appears smarter.

The flow diagram of the bot can be found here: raw, pdf

Update localizations

When adding new sentence, one should run npm run i18n to add the new senctences the localized files in ./locales. Please make sure to install dev dependencies and be aware that node_modules might affect Docker build.

• Report a problem (skip the menu/choices) if the first message is a photo (#8)
• Create secret love from Auntie YouPin <3 (#12)