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heroku-deploy-guide.md

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This guide will walk you step-by-step through deploying an example chat bot (which can be found in the u32i64/vk-chat-bot-example repository) for a community using Heroku.

1. Setting up Heroku

  • Visit signup.heroku.com and create an account there.
  • After completing the registration process, visit your Heroku Dashboard.
  • Create a new app with any name that is available.

New App

New App Dialog

2. Setting up a VK community

  • Visit vk.com/groups, click Create community, and fill in the details:

Create a community

  • In your community, go to Manage.
  • Go to Messages tab, and enable community messages.
  • In Messages -> Bot settings enable Bot abilities, and then enable Add start button.
  • Go to Settings -> API usage.
  • Create a new access token by clicking Create token. Make sure to check this box:

New Token

  • Save your new token somewhere.
  • Now switch to the Callback API -> Server settings tab.
  • Set the API version to 5.80.
  • In the Secret key field, enter your own random combination of characters.
  • Click Save below that field.
  • Go back to Server settings tab and enter in the URL field: https://your-app-name.herokuapp.com/ (Replace your-app-name with the name you specified when creating a new Heroku app in step 1).
  • Don't press Confirm and don't close this page yet.

Callback API settings

3. Setting up environment variables in Heroku

  • Open the Settings tab in your Heroku app, click Reveal Config Vars, and add variables, as follows:
Variable name Description Example value
VK_API_KEY The token you saved earlier into somewhere -
SECRET Secret key r4nd0m_53cr37_k3y
GROUP_ID Number that comes after "group_id": 123456789
CONFIRMATION_TOKEN String that comes after String to be returned: f1234567
CMD_PREFIX Any command prefix /

4. Creating the bot

  • Make sure you have git and Heroku CLI installed.
  • Open up terminal (console), and execute the following commands (assuming your project name on Heroku is some-random-chat-bot):
# Clone the example repository
git clone https://github.com/u32i64/vk-chat-bot-example.git

# Go inside the newly-created folder
cd vk-chat-bot-example

# Log in to Heroku
heroku login

# Add the heroku remote
heroku git:remote -a some-random-chat-bot

# Finally, push the bot to Heroku
git push -u heroku master

5. Final steps

  • Go to your app's logs (in Heroku app dashboard -> More -> View logs)
  • If you see a log message like the one below, then the bot has launched successfully:
  bot info Server is listening on port 12345

If something is not working, feel free to open an issue on GitHub.

  • Now go back to VK's Callback API settings, and press the Confirm button.
  • Also, in the Event types tab, check the following boxes:

Event types

6. Ready!

  • Congratulations, you have just made your own VK chat bot!

7. What's next?

  • Take a look at other pages of the documentation - to understand how the example bot works
  • Change or implement new behavior in your bot - see Core docs
  • If you have any questions, feature requests or bugs - create an issue