MrNiebieski / api-ai-slack-bot

Slack API.AI Integration

This is a fork of api-ai/api-ai-slack-bot with integration of dashbot.

Dashbot Reference Docs and Live Person Takeover Integration

Api.ai Slack Integration

Overview

Api.ai Slack integration allows you to create Slack bots with natural language understanding based on Api.ai technology.

To launch a bot, you’ll need the Linux OS. To launch it in other operating systems, use Docker Toolbox.

Api.ai documentation:

• How to create an Api.ai agent
• How to obtain Api.ai authentication keys
• How to create a dashbot api key

You’ll need 3 keys:

• Client access token for Api.ai
• Slack bot API token
• Dashbot API key

To obtain a Slack bot API token, create a new bot integration here: https://slack.com/apps/A0F7YS25R-bots.

Bot Launch

To launch the bot, use one of the following commands:

For background launch mode (-d parameter):

docker run -d --name slack_bot \
           -e accesstoken="api.ai access key" \
           -e slackkey="slack bot key" \
           -e dashbotkey="dashbot key" \
           speaktoit/api-ai-slack-bot

For interactive launch mode (-it parameter):

docker run -it --name slack_bot \
           -e accesstoken="Api.ai client access key" \
           -e slackkey="Slack bot user key" \
           -e dashbotkey="Dashbot key" \
           speaktoit/api-ai-slack-bot

To stop the bot from running in the interactive mode, press CTRL+C.

In the background mode, you can control the bot’s state via simple commands:

• docker start slack_bot
• docker stop slack_bot,

where slack_bot is the container name from the run command.

Custom Bot Launch

If you want to customize your bot behavior, follow the steps below.

1. Clone the repository https://github.com/api-ai/api-ai-slack-bot

2. Change the code to index.js

3. In the Docker, use the run command specifying the full path to the directory containing the index.js file:

docker run -d --name slack_bot \
           -e accesstoken="Api.ai client token" \
           -e slackkey="Slack bot user key" \
           -e dashbotkey="Dashbot key" \
           -v /full/path/to/your/src:/usr/app/src \
           speaktoit/api-ai-slack-bot

Code Notes

Bot implementation is based on the Slack Botkit: https://github.com/howdyai/botkit.

Message processing is done by the following code:

controller.hears(['.*'],['direct_message','direct_mention','mention', 'ambient'], function(bot,message) {
    console.log(message.text);
    if (message.type == "message") {
        if (message.user == bot.identity.id) {
            // message from bot can be skipped
        }
        else {
            var requestText = message.text;
            var channel = message.channel;
            if (!(channel in sessionIds)) {
                sessionIds[channel] = uuid.v1();
            }
            var request = apiAiService.textRequest(requestText, { sessionId: sessionIds[channel] });
            request.on('response', function (response) {
                console.log(response);
                if (response.result) {
                    var responseText = response.result.fulfillment.speech;
                    if (responseText) {
                        bot.reply(message, responseText);
                    }
                }
            });
            request.on('error', function (error) {
                console.log(error);
            });
            request.end();
        }
    }
});

This code extracts the text from each message:

var requestText = message.text;

And sends it to Api.ai:

var request = apiAiService.textRequest(requestText, { sessionId: sessionIds[channel] });

If a non-empty response is received from Api.ai, the bot will respond with the received text:

bot.reply(message, responseText);