Supported Channels	Getting Started	How it works	Messages Formats	Getting Started with Recast.AI	License

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Bot Connector

Bot Connector allows you to connect your bot to multiple messaging channels.

It provides a higher level API to manage several messaging platforms at once, and lets you focus on your bot by using a simple and unique format to talk to the entire world.

Documentation

You can see the API documentation here

Or generate the documentation with the following command:

yarn doc && open doc/index.html

Supported Channels

Bot Connector supports the following channels:

• Kik
• Slack
• Messenger
• Callr
• Telegram
• Twilio
• Cisco Spark
• Microsoft Bot Framework (Skype, Teams, Cortana,...)
• Twitter

You can find more information on each channel in the wiki

More will be added, and you can contribute if you want to, and add a thumbs up for the channel you want to see implemented first ;) (To do so, fork this repo, add a thumbs up and make a PR!)

• Discord 👍👍👍
• Line 👍
• Ryver 👍
• Viber
• Wechat 👍👍
• Zinc.it 👍
• Salesforce 👍

You can find the current roadmap here.

Getting started

The following examples use yarn package manager but you can use your favorite one like npm, or pnpm.

In order to run the connector you need MongoDB installed and running. The configuration files for MongoDB are stored in config directory.

Installation

Clone the repository and install the dependencies

git clone https://github.com/RecastAI/bot-connector.git
cd bot-connector
yarn install

Running in development mode (hot reload)

yarn start-dev

Setup your connector

First of all, you need to create a connector with the Bot Connector's API.

curl -X POST 'http://localhost:8080/connectors' --data 'url=YOUR_CONNECTOR_ENDPOINT_URL'

Then you need some code so the Bot Connector, via the connector you've just created, can send you the messages it receives. You can use the code from the example as a starter.

cd example
yarn install
yarn start

Now that your bot (well, your code) and the Bot Connector are running, you have to create channels. Channel is the actual link between your connector and a specific service like Messenger, Slack or Kik. A connector can have multiple channels.

How it works

There are two distinct flows:

• your bot receive a message from a channel
• your bot send a message to a channel

This pipeline allows us to have an abstraction of messages independent of the platform and implement only a few functions for each messaging platform (input and output parsing).

Receive a message

The Bot Connector posts on your connector's endpoint each time a new message arrives from a channel.

• a new message is received by Bot Connector
• the message is parsed by the corresponding service
• the message is saved in MongoDB
• the message is post to the connector endpoint

Post a message

To send a new message, you have to post it to Bot Connector's API

• the messages are saved in MongoDB
• the messages are formatted by the corresponding service to match the channel's format
• the messages are sent by Bot Connector to the corresponding channel

Messages format

All messages coming from the bot are parsed and modified to match the destination channel specifications. Bot Connector supports several message formats:

• Text

{
  type: 'text',
  content: 'MY_TEXT',
}

• Picture

{
  type: 'picture',
  content: 'IMAGE_URL',
}

• Video

{
  type: 'video',
  content: 'VIDEO_URL',
}

• Quick Replies

{
  type: 'quickReplies',
  content: {
    title: 'TITLE',
    buttons: [
      {
        title: 'BUTTON_1_TITLE',
        value: 'BUTTON_1_VALUE',
      }, {
        title: 'BUTTON_2_TITLE',
        value: 'BUTTON_2_VALUE',
      }
    ]
  }
}

• List

{
  type: 'list',
  content: {
    elements: [
      {
        title: 'ELEM_1_TITLE',
        imageUrl: 'IMAGE_URL',
        subtitle: 'ELEM_1_SUBTITLE',
        buttons: [
          {
            title: 'BUTTON_1_TITLE',
            value: 'BUTTON_1_VALUE',
            type: 'BUTTON_TYPE',
          }
        ]
      }
    ],
    buttons: [
      {
        title: 'BUTTON_1_TITLE',
        value: 'BUTTON_1_VALUE',
        type: 'BUTTON_TYPE',
      }
    ]
  }
}

• Card

{
  type: 'card',
  content: {
    title: 'CARD_TITLE',
    subtitle: 'CARD_SUBTITLE',
    imageUrl: 'IMAGE_URL',
    buttons: [
      {
        title: 'BUTTON_TITLE',
        type: 'BUTTON_TYPE', // See Facebook Messenger button formats
        value: 'BUTTON_VALUE',
      }
    ],
  },
}

• Carousel

{
  type: 'carousel',
  content: [
    {
      title: 'CARD_1_TITLE',
      imageUrl: 'IMAGE_URL',
      buttons: [
        {
          title: 'BUTTON_1_TITLE',
          value: 'BUTTON_1_VALUE',
          type: 'BUTTON_1_TYPE', 
        }  
      ]
    }
  ],
}

Issue

If you encounter any issue, please follow this guide.

Contribution

Want to contribute? Great! Please check this guide.

Getting started with Recast.AI

We build products to help enterprises and developers have a better understanding of user inputs.

• NLP API: a unique API for text processing, and augmented training.
• Bot Building Tools: all you need to create smart bots powered by Recast.AI's NLP API. Design even the most complex conversation flow, use all rich messaging formats and connect to external APIs and services.
• Bot Connector API: standardizes the messaging format across all channels, letting you connect your bots to any channel in minutes.

Learn more about:

API Documentation	Discover the platform	First bot tutorial	Advanced NodeJS tutorial	Advanced Python tutorial

License

Copyright (c) [2016] Recast.AI

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NON INFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.