An extension for facebook-chat-api, which provides slightly better UX for your chat bot by adding buttons.
Current use of facebook chat bots, works by sending a text command. Unfortunately it's not enough intuitive. The workaround are buttons, which help with some UX problems.
After sending an url, facebook gets informations about website by searching meta tags. These meta tags are a way to express what a given website is about. This is called prefetching.
For example, if you send an url to website, which looks like this:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta property="title" content="Your title" />
<meta property="description" content="Your description" />
</head>
<body></body>
</html>You will get this card. As you see, it has title and description.
Chat Buttons handles these meta informations which goes to facebook and handles if button has been clicked.
NOTE: To use buttons, you will need to have a public server.
To install Chat Buttons, run in terminal:
$ npm install fb-chat-api-buttonsconst express = require("express");
const login = require("facebook-chat-api");
const { ChatButtons } = require("fb-chat-api-buttons");
let botCredentials = { email: "email", password: "password" };
const app = new express();
const buttons = new ChatButtons({
app: app,
endpoint: "http://www.example.com:3000/callback"
});
login(botCredentials, (err, api) => {
buttons.setApi(api);
api.listen((err, message) => {
if (message.body === "test") {
buttons.send(
{
id: "hello-there",
title: "I'm a button",
description: "Click to get a message.",
onClick: (btn, threadID) => {
api.sendMessage({ body: "Hello there!" }, threadID);
}
},
message.threadID
);
}
});
});
app.listen(3000, () => {
console.log("Listening on 3000!");
});new ChatButtons(options: IOptions)
Example:
const app = new express();
const buttons = new ChatButtons({
app: app,
endpoint: "http://www.example.com:3000/callback"
});Arguments:
api: any
Example:
login(botCredentials, (err, api) => {
buttons.setApi(api);
});Arguments:
btn: IButtonthreadID: string
Example:
buttons.send(
{
id: "btn-id",
title: "Title",
description: "Description",
onClick: (btn, id) => {
api.sendMessage({ body: "Hello world!" }, id);
}
},
threadID
);interface {
app: Application; // Express application
path?: string;
endpoint: string;
api?: any;
}interface {
id?: string;
metadata?: any;
title: string;
description?: string;
image?: string;
onClick?: IButtonCallback;
}