Non-java setup

[bigeagle]

Hi there,

I'm a python developer, and I love actor. However, it seems currently the only solution building actor bots is to use webhook.
Is it possible to have REST-based bots? Or, as an alternative, how can I send photos/attachments/formated text through webhook?

Cheers,

[rockjam]

@bigeagle
We plan to deprecate webhooks in future. Bots can handle everything that webhooks do.
Sadly, but currently there is no way to use bots without botkit. In near future, I hope we can develop experimental solution for nodejs

Is it possible to have REST-based bots?

yes, it is. we plan to do it some day. No concrete date yet.

[bigeagle]

Hi @rockjam, sadly, neither nodejs nor java is friendly to me. I can do in node or java but I don't won't to integrate them into my projects.
Why do you limit botkit with programming languages?
I think many people like me wants to develop actor bots, but for many reasons they need to use python/go/ruby/rust/....

[onsails]

Actually we are planning to release documentation to a bot api after its remastering. It will happen in a couple of weeks I think.
@rockjam is wrong that there is no way to use bots without a botkit. Botkit works with Actor Server using simple JSON protocol over WebSocket which consists of three simple units: Request, Response and Update. For now to write bots without our botkit you need to look at the traffic to see a format and use this information to write bots in any language.

[bigeagle]

That's great news! I'm looking forward for the new bot api.

Cheers,

[rockjam]

@bigeagle @prettynatty what I meant is - it's pretty difficult for now to write bots without botkit. Node-js solution I mentioned before will help us to document current message format, for future usage.

[ex3ndr]

We have it in our roadmap
https://github.com/actorapp/actor-platform/issues/640

[bluekite2000]

@prettynatty @ex3ndr any update on the doc? I want to implement a bot but doesnt know where to start.