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This is an example on how you can create a Weather Chatbot on Facebook platform, using Ruby on Rails and Wit.ai

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Chatbot Development Tutorial: How to build a fully functional weather bot on Facebook Messenger

Overview

This is an example on how you can build a Weather Chatbot on Facebook platform, using Ruby on Rails and Wit.ai The technology stack we used is

  • Server backend: Ruby on Rails
  • Natural Language Processing platfrom: Wit.ai
  • Deployment on Facebook Messenger
  • The Singapore National Environment Agency provides a nice API (for free) that gives current weather as well as forecasts

Sample feature: (1) Able to return the “2 Hour Nowcast” when user asks for the current weather User: “What’s the weather in Singapore?” Bot: “The weather in Singapore is {weather}” User: “How’s the weather in Singapore?” Bot: “The weather in Singapore is {weather}” User: “Is it raining in Singapore” Bot: “The weather in Singapore is {weather}”

You can try out the weather bot here: WBot By Robusttechhouse Screen Shot 2017-02-07 at 12.03.28 PM

Setting Up Wit.AI

Go to https://wit.ai/home and create a wit app for you. Read https://wit.ai/docs/quickstart and follow the steps there. Then, go to the settings in your wit app and get the token id. Screen Shot 2017-02-07 at 12.09.05 PM

Integrate Rails app with Wit

Models

We’re gonna only have two, relatively simple models; Message and Conversation In /app/models/message.rb

# frozen_string_literal: true
class Message
  include Mongoid::Document
  include Mongoid::Timestamps

  field :body, type: String
  field :conversation_id, type: Integer
  field :kind, type: String

  has_many :quick_replies
  belongs_to :conversation

  validates_inclusion_of :kind, in: %w(outgoing incoming), allow_nil: false
  validates :conversation, presence: true
end

In /app/models/conversation.rb

# frozen_string_literal: true
class Conversation
  include Mongoid::Document
  include Mongoid::Timestamps

  field :uid, type: String
  field :context, type: Hash

  has_many :messages
end

WitExtension Singleton

'wit' is a very nice gem that support our rails app to integrate with wit.ai

gem 'wit'

Create a new wit_extension.rb file in /extensions. What we need to do now, is create a WitExtension Singleton class and in it’s initializer, we set up a Wit client, it’s access_token and actions. Thanks to the above code, we can call WitExtension.instance.client anywhere in our Rails application and it would return the same instance of WitExtension and hence, the same Wit client object. Note that you shouldn’t actually have your access_token or any other token like it just lying around in code waiting to be put in version control. You should use the secrets.yml for development and environment variables in production.

Our actions Hash get the conversation to update the context with the right keys at the right time.

The code in the getForecast action extracts the entities from Wit’s request parameter and updates context’s keys and values based on whatever it requires to operate.

It is from the returned context Hash that Wit decides what to do based on the presence and/or absence of any of the keys.

# frozen_string_literal: true
require 'wit'
require 'singleton'

class WitExtension
  include Singleton

  def initialize
    access_token = ENV['server_access_token']
    actions = {
      send: lambda do |_request, response|
        puts("[debuz] got response... #{response['text']}")

        message = Message.create(body: response['text'], kind: 'outgoing', conversation: @conversation)
        message.digest
      end,

      getForecast:
        lambda do |request|
          context = request['context']
          entities = request['entities']

          location = first_entity_value(entities, 'location') || context['location']

          if location
            forecast = search_forecast(location)
            context['forecast'] = forecast
            new_context = {}
          else
            new_context = context
          end

          @conversation.update(context: new_context)
          return context
        end
    }

    @client = Wit.new(access_token: access_token, actions: actions)
  end

  attr_reader :client

  def set_conversation(conversation)
    @conversation = conversation
  end

  private

  def first_entity_value(entities, entity)
    return nil unless entities.key? entity
    val = entities[entity][0]['value']
    return nil if val.nil?
    val.is_a?(Hash) ? val['value'] : val
  end

  def search_forecast(location)
    puts "[debuz] Searching for weather in #{location} ..."
    WeatherExtension.search_forecast(location)
  end
end

Chat Extension

This class acts as a controller between messages from Facebook and our Bot's brain (Wit). It also has the responsibility to backup messages & conversations.

# frozen_string_literal: true
class ChatExtension
  class << self
    def response(message, uid)
      puts "[debuz] asking WIT for... #{message}"
      find_or_initialize_conversation(uid)
      create_incoming_message(message)
      WitExtension.instance.client.run_actions(@conversation.uid, message, @conversation.context.to_h)
    end

    private

    def find_or_initialize_conversation(uid)
      @conversation = Conversation.find_or_create_by(uid: uid)
      WitExtension.instance.set_conversation(@conversation)
    end

    def create_incoming_message(message)
      create_message('incoming', message)
    end

    def create_message(kind, message)
      @message = @conversation.messages.create(
        body: message,
        kind: kind
      )
    end
  end
end

Integrate Rails app with Facebook Messenger

Set up Facebook App

Head on over to the developer console and press “Add a New App”. After creating one, you can skip the quick start. You’ll end up here. 1*0DZc9c_t2Sr2DuUpIYvO5Q From here, you’re going to want to press “+Add Product” and add Messenger. After we configure a webhook, Facebook wants us to validate the URL to our application.

Set up Rails App

We’ll be using the facebook-messenger gem. It’s arguably the best Ruby client for Facebook Messenger. Add initializer code

# frozen_string_literal: true
# config/initializers/facebook_messenger.rb

unless Rails.env.production?
  bot_files = Dir[Rails.root.join('app', 'bot', '**', '*.rb')]
  bots_reloader = ActiveSupport::FileUpdateChecker.new(bot_files) do
    bot_files.each { |file| require_dependency file }
  end

  ActionDispatch::Callbacks.to_prepare do
    bots_reloader.execute_if_updated
  end

  bot_files.each { |file| require_dependency file }
end

Add initial code for our bot

# frozen_string_literal: true
# app/bot/listen.rb

require 'facebook/messenger'

include Facebook::Messenger

Facebook::Messenger::Subscriptions.subscribe(access_token: ENV['ACCESS_TOKEN'])

Bot.on :message do |message|
  # message.id          # => 'mid.1457764197618:41d102a3e1ae206a38'
  # message.sender      # => { 'id' => '1008372609250235' }
  # message.sent_at     # => 2016-04-22 21:30:36 +0200
  # message.text        # => 'Hello, bot!'

  begin
    if message.text.nil?
      message_text = KnownLocation.guess_known_location_by_coordinates(message.attachments.first['payload']['coordinates'].values)
    else
      message_text = message.text
    end

    puts "[debuz] got from Facebook... #{message.text}"
    ChatExtension.response(message_text, message.sender['id'])

  rescue => e
    puts '[debuz] got unhandlable message: ' + e.message + ' :@: ' + message.to_json
  end
end

Add to config/application.rb so rails knows about our bot files

# Auto-load /bot and its subdirectories

config.paths.add File.join("app", "bot"), glob: File.join("**","*.rb")
config.autoload_paths += Dir[Rails.root.join("app", "bot", "*")]

Update routes for /bot

# config/routes.rb

Rails.application.routes.draw do
  mount Facebook::Messenger::Server, at: "bot"
end

Set the env variables for the following

ACCESS_TOKEN=
VERIFY_TOKEN=
APP_SECRET=

Wrap up

Now that we have a functional bot, we can play around with the UI elements that Facebook provides. You can check them out here. With this post, I hope you can build a chat-bot for for your own. This is an interesting space as it’s fairly new, good luck! You can find the example Rails app here: https://github.com/duc4nh/Wbot

References

Special thanks to:

Brought to you by SingaporeChabots.sg. Want to build a chatbot? Drop us a note !

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This is an example on how you can create a Weather Chatbot on Facebook platform, using Ruby on Rails and Wit.ai

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