quickblox-javascript-sdk

Overview

Bots are third-party applications that run inside QuickBlox platform. Chatbots are controlled programmatically via QuickBlox Javascript/Node.js SDK.

How To Build Chatbots

Create a new app in the Dashboard

QuickBlox application includes everything that brings messaging right into your application - chat, video calling, users, push notifications, etc. To create a QuickBlox application, follow the steps below:

1. Register a new account following this link. Type in your email and password to sign in. You can also sign in with your Google or Github accounts.
2. Create the app clicking New app button.
3. Configure the app. Type in the information about your organization into corresponding fields and click Add button.
4. Go to Dashboard => YOUR_APP => Overview section and copy your Application ID, Authorization Key, Authorization Secret, and Account Key .

Create bot user

To create a bot user, follow the steps below:

1. Go to Dashboard => YOUR_APP => Users => Add new user direction
2. Copy user ID. The user ID appears in the table with users once a User is created
3. Copy password. The password is taken from the Add user form.
4. Save user ID and password somewhere. We will use these 2 values later on.

Create Node.js carcass application

Open terminal and type the following commands:

mkdir my_awesome_bot
cd my_awesome_bot
npm init

This will ask you a bunch of questions, and then write a package.json file for you. More information on npm init. The main thing is that we have now a package.json file and can start to develop our first chatbot.

Connect QuickBlox Javascript/Node.js SDK

In terminal type the following command:

npm install quickblox --save

Create index.js file

Type the following command in terminal:

touch index.js

It will create the main entry point for your bot. Open this file and let’s write some logic.

Making your bot heart beat

Open index.js file and write the following code:

"use strict";

const QB = require("quickblox");

const CONFIG = {
  appId: "...",
  authKey: "...",
  authSecret: "...",
  botUser: {
    id: "...",
    password: "...",
  },
};

// Initialise QuickBlox
QB.init(CONFIG.appId, CONFIG.authKey, CONFIG.authSecret);

// Connect to Real-Time Chat
QB.chat.connect(
  {
    userId: CONFIG.botUser.id,
    password: CONFIG.botUser.password,
  },
  (chatConnectError) => {
    if (chatConnectError) {
      console.log(
        "[QB] chat.connect is failed",
        JSON.stringify(chatConnectError)
      );
      process.exit(1);
    }

    console.log("[QB] Bot is up and running");

    // Add chat messages listener
    QB.chat.onMessageListener = onMessageListener;
  }
);

function onMessageListener(userId, msg) {
  // process 1-1 messages
  if (msg.type == "chat") {
    if (msg.body) {
      let answerMessage = {
        type: "chat",
        body: msg.body, // echo back original message
        extension: {
          save_to_history: 1,
        },
      };

      QB.chat.send(userId, answerMessage);
    }
  }
}

process.on("exit", function () {
  console.log("Kill bot");
  QB.chat.disconnect();
});

This is a simple bot that simply replies back with origin message.

For CONFIG variable put the following values:

1. Bot user ID and password. Get these values following Dashboard => YOUR_APP => Users => Add new user direction. The user ID appears in the table with users once a User is created and the password is taken from the Add user form.

2. Application ID, Authorization Key, and Authorization Secret. Get these values following Dashboard => YOUR_APP => Overview direction and copy them from here.

Improve bot’s intelligence

Usually, it’s not enough just to build a simple bot that echoes your messages. It’s better to add some intelligence for your bot. For this purpose, we need to connect some bot’s intelligence platform/library to your bot. There is a cool product called https://www.rivescript.com. RiveScript is a scripting language for chatbots, making it easy to write trigger/response pairs for building up a bot’s intelligence.

Install RiveScript

Inside your bot directory run the following command to install RiveScript:

npm install rivescript --save

Prepare ‘.rive’ file

RiveScript is a text-based scripting language meant to aid in the development of interactive chatbots. To write your own RiveScript code, you will only need a simple text editing program. A RiveScript document is a text file containing RiveScript code. These files will have a .rive extension. An example file name would be replies.rive.

Create a txt file in your bot’s directory and name it replies.rive. Then go to https://www.rivescript.com/try, choose rs-standard.rive template and copy all content into your file.

Read more information on RiveScript code.

Connect RiveScript to your bot

Open index.js file and add the following code:

const RiveScript = require("rivescript");

//...

// Init RiveScript logic
const riveScriptGenerator = new RiveScript();

function loadingDone(batch_num) {
  console.log("[RiveScript] Batch #" + batch_num + " has finished loading!");
  riveScriptGenerator.sortReplies();
}

function loadingError(batch_num, error) {
  console.log(
    "[RiveScript] Load the batch #" + batch_num + " is failed",
    JSON.stringify(error)
  );
}

// load our replies file
riveScriptGenerator.loadFile("replies.rive", loadingDone, loadingError);

//...

let answerMessage = {
  type: "chat",
  body: riveScriptGenerator.reply(userId, msg.body),
  extension: {
    save_to_history: 1,
  },
};
//...

Here we initialize RiveScript, then load all replies flows from replies.rive file and build message reply based on RiveScript replies flows.

Run our bot

Type the following command to run our bot in terminal:

 node index.js

Now you can write something to your bot and will receive a reply. See the documentation at https://docs.quickblox.com/docs/js-quick-start.

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