fb-local-chat-bot

Testing your Messenger Bot apps is a pain in the ass - you need to setup ngrok to tunnel to your server (what happens when multiple people work on it?) and writing unit tests are not intuitive.

fb-local-chat-bot is
- a standard library that handles the boilerplate logic to connect with FB APIs
- a local web client to debug the app (see screenshot)
- a set of intuitive APIs for unit testing on messenger bot

Demo



Install

``
npm install fb-local-chat-bot
`

Code Snippet

Initialize

`
// app.js
// if useMessenger is false, the plugin will not make graphAPI calls to facebook
// if useLocalChat is true, the plugin will initialize the local chat view.
Bot.init(
config.FBChatToken || '',
'SETUP_PLAY_GO_THIS_IS_RIGHT',
false, // useMessenger
config.useFBChatLocalTest || false,
);

Bot.on('text', async (event: object) => {
// do something
});

Bot.on('attachments', async (event: object) => {
// do something
});

Bot.on('postback', async (event: object) => {
// do something
});

app.use('/webhook', Bot.router());
// go to http://localhost:5000/webhook/localChat/ for local chat debugging
`

Send APIs


`
// generic send API
Bot.send(userID, messageData);

// send text
Bot.sendText(userID, "Yo what's up how you doin");

// send image
Bot.sendImage(userID, imageURL);

// send buttons
Bot.sendButtons(
userID,
'Some text',
[
Bot.createPostbackButton(
'button 1',
'BUTTON_TYPE_1',
),
Bot.createPostbackButton(
'button 2',
'BUTTON_TYPE_2',
),
]
);
// Other APIs (see src/index.js for detail)
// Bot.sendVideo
// Bot.sendFile
// Bot.sendAudio
// Bot.sendGenericTemplate
// Bot.sendListTemplate
// Bot.sendQuickReplyWithAttachment
// Bot.sendQuickReplyWithText
`

Testing APIs


`
// example using mocha
describe('Basic server test', function() {
this.timeout(1000);
var server;
var userID = 'testUser';
beforeEach(mochaAsync(async () => {
server = await makeServer(true / silent /);
}));

afterEach(function (done) {
Bot.clearLocalChatMessages();
Bot.removeAllListeners();
server.close(done);
});

it('Test help', mochaAsync(async () => {
await ResponseHandler.handleText(userID, "help");

let messages = Bot.getLocalChatMessagesForUser(userID);
expect(messages.length).to.equal(2);
}));
});

`

History


- 0.1.4
- Add persistent menu support
- Add sender action
- 0.1.3
- Add general template hscroll
- 0.1.0
- Add useMessenger` param
- Add QuickReply, ListTemplate, GenericTemplate and various buttons
- Add profile fetching API