simonmulser / lonley-zombie-bot

Facebook Example

A Facebook Messenger Bot Example in Clojure

Facebook and app setup

1. Setup a Facebook Page, Facebook app, create a Page Access Token and link the app to the page by following this step-by-step guide.

2. Download the repository: lemmings-io/02-facebook-example

3. Extract it into the /lemmings/clojure/projects directory.

4. Provide your Facebook Page Access Token, Verify Token and Page Secret for local development by creating a file called profiles.clj in your working directory <your-project-name>/profiles.clj

    {:dev {:env {:page-access-token "<REPLACE>"
       		   	 :verify-token "<REPLACE>"}}}
   

Starting the development environment

1. Start a new VM shell session via vagrant ssh in your terminal.

2. Once logged in to the VM shell change into the facebook-example project directory

    cd 02-facebook-example/
   

3. Run ngrok http 3000 (read more about ngrok)

   

4. Start another new VM shell session via vagrant ssh in a new terminal window.

5. Start the local server

    lein ring server-headless
   

   

   Via the lein-ring doc: by default, this command attempts to find a free port, starting at 3000.

Check if the app is running

1. Visit the https URL of the ngrok process you've started earlier in this guide.
   E.g. https://0db8caac.ngrok.io

   If everything went right, you'll see "Hello Lemming :)" in your Browser 🎈

   

2. In your Facebook Developer App go to "Webhooks" in the left sidebar and add Callback URL and Verify Token accordingly:

   

3. Click "Verify and Save" and your app is connected to Facebook's Messenger API. 🎈

   

4. Go to your Facebook Page and send a message and your bot echo's your input. Congratulations!💧

   

Check out the code to find out more. Also try sending "image" or "help" to your bot. 🙂

Deploying to Heroku

1. If you haven't yet, create an account at Heroku.

2. In the VM shell session login to your Heroku account via heroku login.

   -> heroku login
   Enter your Heroku credentials.
   Email:
   Password:
   

3. Create an app on Heroku for your bot. Type heroku create into your command prompt at the root of the project.

   -> heroku create
   Creating gentle-plateau-38046... done, stack is cedar-14
   https://gentle-plateau-38046.herokuapp.com/ | https://git.heroku.com/gentle-plateau-38046.git
   Git remote heroku added
   

4. Do a command line heroku config for each one of your tokens:

   heroku config:set PAGE_ACCESS_TOKEN=your_page_access_token
   heroku config:set VERIFY_TOKEN=your_verify_token
   

5. In case you made any changes in your code after downloading the original repository you need to commit them with git add . in your command prompt to check-in your changes to Git Version Control and add a commit message with git commit -m "updated my bot".

   Keep in mind to repeat this step with every future code change to be able to push them to Heroku in the next step.

   Hint: Check out the Links section at the bottom of this tutorial for more information around GitHub & Git Version Control.

6. Eventually, you can push all changes to Heroku with:

   git push heroku master

   You should see it deploy. 🍵

7. Now we need to setup your app on Facebook with your app hosted on Heroku.

   As you've done it earlier for your local environment, in your Facebook Developer App click on the "Webhooks" section in the left sidebar and add Callback URL (e.g. https://gentle-plateau-38046.herokuapp.com/webhook) and Verify Token accordingly.

   

8. Click "Verify and Save" and your Heroku app is connected to Facebook's Messenger API 🎈

   

9. Go to your Facebook Page and send a message and your bot should echo your input again. Kudos! 🙂💧

   

Note: This clojure app is ready for deployment on Heroku and based on Heroku's Clojure Getting Started Example.

Links

• Getting started with GitHub and Git Version Control
• JSON Database Example