Patron - FB Messenger Bot For Bar Recommendations in NYC

This app was built using Botkit.

• Built using Express and MongoDB.
• This will be hosted on Heroku, and available to the general public to experiment with.
• Mongoose is the DB driver, hosted on mlab. Database is forty real bars across three boroughs and Long Island (Nassau County).
• Here's the story I wrote while developing this: https://mystudentvoices.com/on-building-a-fb-messenger-bot-thats-mildly-useful-it-recommends-bars-in-nyc-5459369794a4

Features

• Search by borough

• Search by price range, from 1 to 5 (cheap to expensive).

Configuration

• Controllers for the Messenger bot. Conversations does most of the user interaction work - based on user input we enter that as a search param.

app/controllers/conversations.js

• Heavy lifting for the server, mostly courtesy of Botkit. My only addition is userSearch, which just spits back some more info about the user (name, location, etc) to save in our schema.

app/controllers/conversations.js

• Serves webpages through standard express routes

app/routes/routes.js

• Main page of the site.

app/views/home.js

• Change the schema of bars(called stages in the code, because I'm insane).

app/models/stages.js

• Add new bars to the database.

app/views/maker.js

• Main index page of the site. Written in Angular. Gets a JSON response of all bars in the database and then filter using query.

app/views/index.html

• Angular code. It's just one HTTP request inside one controller.

app/public/core.js

Setup

As per original set up instructions.

• For local deployment

There are quite a number of steps to set up a Facebook bot

1. Create a Facebook page. Add Page ID in .env file (rename the .env-demo file)

2. Create a Facebook app. Add App ID in .env file

3. Add Messenger to your App, then select the Page, to generate a Page Access token. Add Token in .env file

4. install localtunnel to your computer, then use this command to make it available for webhooks

lt --subdomain yourappname --port 5000

5. Add Webhooks to your app

5.1) Choose a verify token, add it to the .env file as well

5.2) Set the app webhook url to https://yourappname.localtunnel.me/webhook

5.3) Restart your server and click verify

• For Heroku deployment

Add Page ID, App ID, and token as environment variables. Change the webhook route to match your deployed domain name.

You can use MongoLab add-on to add Mongo storage, they have a free tier.

Licence

Shared under MIT licence