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

• 0.1.0
  • add useMessenger param
  • add QuickReply, ListTemplate, GenericTemplate and various buttons
  • Add profile fetching API