Heroku Buildpack for Facebook Messenger Bots

Creates a Facebook test user and test page for a messenger chatbot

The app.json file serves as a manifest for describing applications deployed to Heroku. Within the app.json file is an optional key-value pair called scripts. Heroku supports both postdeploy and pr-predestroy scripts that execute at different stages of the build and release process. This buildpack adds custom postdeploy and pr-predestroy scripts to any Heroku application for creating and destroying Facebook test user accounts for testing purposes. Read more on the motivation here.

Usage

1. Update your app.json to include the following buildpacks heroku/python and heroku-buildpack-messenger-bot:

    {
        ...
        "buildpacks": [
            {
                "url": "heroku/python"
            },
            {
                "url": "https://github.com/hey-mako/heroku-buildpack-messenger-bot"
            }
        ]
        ...
    }

2. Update your app.json to include the following scripts:

    {
        ...
        "scripts": {
            "postdeploy": "bin/postdeploy.sh",
            "pr-predestroy": "bin/pr-predestroy.sh"
        }
        ...
    }

Note that postdeploy is only run once after the app is created and deployed for the first time. Any subsequent deployments do not invoke the postdeploy script; for example, when a pull request branch is updated.

The pr-predestroy script applies only to Heroku Review Apps and is invoked only after closing or merging the associated pull request.

3. Create a messenger.json file in the root directory of the application with the following settings:

{
    "graph_page_about": "This page is a test page for testing a chatbot", // The description of the test page
    "graph_page_name": "Test Page For Heroku", // The name of the test page, it is best to avoid symbols
    "graph_subscription_callback_url": "https://${HEROKU_APP_NAME}.herokuapp.com/callback" // Callback URL to configure the bot webhook
}

Note: The messenger.json file supports environment variable expansion. Additional variables for messenger.json exist here.

Refer to our Messenger Bot Demo repository for additional information or to see it in action.

Feedback

• Submit a GitHub Issue