This repo contains everything you need to get started building a bot with Botkit and Botkit Studio!
Botkit Studio is a set tools that adds capabilities to the open source Botkit library by offering hosted GUI interfaces for script management and action trigger definition. Botkit Studio is built by the company that created and maintains the open source Botkit library, Howdy.
While Botkit Studio is not required to build a bot using Botkit, we highly recommend it as your bot will be easier to manage, customize and extend.
Clone this repository:
git clone https://github.com/howdyai/botkit-starter-facebook.git
Install dependencies, including Botkit:
cd botkit-starter-facebook
npm install
Get a Facebook access_token and verify_token as described here
Get a Botkit Studio API studio_token from your Botkit developer account
Update the .env file with your newly acquired tokens.
Launch your bot application by typing:
node .
Facebook requires your application be available at an SSL-enabled endpoint. To expose an endpoint during development, we recommend using localtunnel.me or ngrok, either of which can be used to temporarily expose your bot to Facebook. Once stable and published to the real internet, use nginx or another web server to provide an SSL-powered front end to your bot application.
Continue your journey to becoming a champion botmaster by reading the Botkit Studio SDK documentation here.
This repo is designed to provide developers a robust starting point for building a custom bot. Included in the code are a set of sample bot "skills" that illustrate various aspects of the Botkit SDK features. Once you are familiar with how Botkit works, you may safely delete all of the files in the skills/ subfolder.
Developers will build custom features as modules that live in the skills/ folder. The main bot application will automatically include any files placed there.
A skill module should be in the format:
module.exports = function(controller) {
// add event handlers to controller
// such as hears handlers that match triggers defined in code
// or controller.studio.before, validate, and after which tie into triggers
// defined in the Botkit Studio UI.
}