krismuniz / botkit-sms

Twilio Programmable SMS implementation for Botkit.

🚨Deprecated in favor of botkit!

The official Botkit project now supports Twilio SMS! Install botkit instead. If you already use botkit-sms please consider switching as this project is no longer maintained.

botkit-sms

botkit-sms allows you to create conversational SMS apps ("bots") via Twilio's Programmable SMS API using Botkit's familiar interface.

It takes advantage of Botkit's core functionality thus allowing you to create complex conversational flows via a simple interface. It also allows you to use custom storage methods/systems to enable data persistence across sessions.

What is Botkit?

Here's an excerpt of Botkit's readme.md file:

[Botkit] provides a semantic interface to sending and receiving messages so that developers can focus on creating novel applications and experiences instead of dealing with API endpoints.

Use Case

You can use botkit-sms to build SMS bots with moderately-complex conversational flows.

Installation

$ npm install --save botkit-sms

Usage

Note: This document assumes that you are familiarized with Botkit and Twilio's Programmable SMS API

To connect your bot to Twilio you must point a Messaging webhook to http://your_host/sms/receive, after doing so, every Twilio message will be sent to that address.

Then you need to write your bot. First, create a TwilioSMSBot instance and pass an object with your configuration properties:

• account_sid: found in your Twilio Console Dashboard
• auth_token: found in your Twilio Console Dashboard
• twilio_number: your app's phone number, found in your Phone Numbers Dashboard The phone number format must be: [phone]

const TwilioSMSBot = require('botkit-sms')
const controller = TwilioSMSBot({
  account_sid: process.env.TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID,
  auth_token: process.env.TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN,
  twilio_number: process.env.TWILIO_NUMBER
})

spawn() your bot instance:

let bot = controller.spawn({})

Then you need to set up your Web server and create the webhook endpoints so your app can receive Twilio's messages:

controller.setupWebserver(process.env.PORT, function (err, webserver) {
  controller.createWebhookEndpoints(controller.webserver, bot, function () {
    console.log('TwilioSMSBot is online!')
  })
})

And finally, you can setup listeners for specific messages, like you would in any other botkit bot:

controller.hears(['hi', 'hello'], 'message_received', (bot, message) => {
  bot.startConversation(message, (err, convo) => {
    convo.say('Hi, I am Oliver, an SMS bot! :D')
    convo.ask('What is your name?', (res, convo) => {
      convo.say(`Nice to meet you, ${res.text}!`)
      convo.next()
    })
  })
})

controller.hears('.*', 'message_received', (bot, message) => {
  bot.reply(message, 'huh?')

  // send an image
  bot.reply(message, {
    body: 'Optional body to go with text',
    mediaUrl: 'https://i.imgur.com/9n3qoKx.png'
  })
})

See full example in the examples directory of this repo.

Reference

Please see botkit's guide and reference document here.

Contributing

This project is no longer maintained. Consider forking or –better yet– contributing to the official Botkit instead.

License

The MIT License (MIT)

Copyright (c) 2016 Kristian Muñiz