README.md

This is a skeleton bot for Seatjoy

Technical description:

This is a Node.js proyect written in Typescript that use Bot Framework (botbuilder) to connect to Facebook Messenger channel. It contains a main file /src/index.ts This file contains every piece of the bot like DB connection, Facebook Messenger channel connection, bot framework dialogs, static data, etc.

To run locally on Visual Studio Code it uses .vscode/launch.json that contains a script to execute in debug mode. .vscode/tasks.json contains the task to execute during development, in this case if you press Ctrl + Shift + B, it will start transpiling Typescript code to Javascript code into dist folder.

Technical documentation:

/src/index.ts code explanation:

This is used to create the ChatConnector to the bot in Microsoft Bot Framework Bot Framework

MICROSOFT_APP_ID and MICROSOFT_APP_PASSWORD are the credentials from that instance of the bot in Bot Framework.

let connector = new ChatConnector({
    appId: process.env.MICROSOFT_APP_ID,
    appPassword: process.env.MICROSOFT_APP_PASSWORD
});

// bot
let bot = new UniversalBot(connector);

This code handles default dialog, when none of the options is selected or the bot didn't understand the intent.

bot.dialog('/None', (session: Session, args) => {
    session.send("Sorry, I didn't get that");
    session.replaceDialog('/mainMenu');
})

This code declares all dialogs used in the bot

// answer get started postback
bot.beginDialogAction('getstarted', '/getstarted');
//1
bot.beginDialogAction('mainMenu', '/mainMenu');
//1.1
bot.beginDialogAction('menuOptions', '/menuOptions');
bot.beginDialogAction('regularMenu', '/regularMenu');
bot.beginDialogAction('specialsMenu', '/specialsMenu');
bot.beginDialogAction('snacksAndDrinksMenu', '/snacksAndDrinksMenu');
bot.beginDialogAction('saladsMenu', '/saladsMenu');
bot.beginDialogAction('moreFoodMenu', '/moreFoodMenu');
//Order
bot.beginDialogAction('order', '/order');
bot.beginDialogAction('confirmOrder', '/confirmOrder');

This is the initial dialog, it executed right after the user clicks Get Started button on Messenger

bot.dialog('/getstarted', [
    (session, args) => {
        resetOrder(session);
        session.send("Welcome %s to Seatjoy food service!", session.message.user.name.split(' ')[0]);
        session.replaceDialog('/mainMenu');
    }
]);

To implement a dialog workflow you have to use this. In this example the dialog code correspond to /mainMenu dialog declared above

bot.dialog('/mainMenu', [
    (session) => {
        //bot code
    }
]);

At the end of the file we have all static data used for this skeleton and data structure used for Orders:

interface IOrderDetails {
    totalPrice: number,
    totalTaxes: number,
    items: IOrderItemDetails[]
}

interface IOrderItemDetails {
    itemName: string,
    title: string,
    description: string,
    price: number,
    taxes: number,
    image: string,
    options: IOrderOption[]
}

interface IOrderOption {
    name: string,
    price: number
}

var regularMenuItems: IOrderItemDetails[]
var specialMenuItems: IOrderItemDetails[]
var snacksAndDrinksMenuItems: IOrderItemDetails[]
var saladsMenuItems: IOrderItemDetails[]
var otherMenuItems: IOrderItemDetails[]

To connect to a MongoDB we use this code:

MongoClient.connect(process.env.DB_URI).then((db) => {
        startBot(db);
    });

Finally we have startBot() function that initiate a Node Express instance to listen incoming request to the bot in the port set in process.env.PORT.

function startBot(db) {
    let server = express()

    server.use(bodyparser.json())

    // this is for localtunnel
    server.get('/', (req, res) => res.send('hello'))

    // Handle Bot Framework messages
    server.post('/api/messages', connector.listen());

    const listener = server.listen(process.env.PORT, function () {

        console.log('Bot started listening on', listener.address().address, listener.address().port);
    })
}