Botkit is the leading developer tool for building chat bots, apps and custom integrations for major messaging platforms.
Botkit offers everything you need to design, build and operate an app:
- Easy-to-extend starter kits
- Fully-featured SDK with support for all major platforms
- Content management and design tools
- Analytics and CRM tools
- Tons of plugins and middlewares
New to Botkit? Read our full guide to getting started with Botkit.
Want to dive right in? Remix one of our starter kits on Glitch. You'll start with a fully functioning app that you can edit and run from the browser!
The best way to get started locally with Botkit is by installing our command line tool, and using it to create a new Botkit project. This will install and configure a starter kit for you!
npm install -g botkit
botkit new
You can also add Botkit into an existing Node application.
First, add it to your project:
npm install --save botkit
Then, add Botkit to your application code:
var Botkit = require('botkit');
var controller = Botkit.anywhere(configuration);
controller.hears('hello','direct_message', function(bot, message) {
bot.reply(message,'Hello yourself!');
});
Botkit is programming library, along with a suite of supporting tools and plugins, that provides bot builders a platform independent, language-like interface for building a chatbot or messaging app for any platform. It handles all the nitty gritty technical details, allowing you to focus on building COOL FEATURES for your bot.
The toolkit is designed to provide meaningful building blocks for creating conversational user interfaces - with functions like hears(), ask(), and reply() that do what they say they do.
Most bots do their thing by listening for keywords, phrases or patterns in messages from users. Botkit has a special event handler called hears() that makes it easy to configure your bot to listen for this type of trigger.
// listen for a message containing the world "hello", and send a reply
controller.hears('hello','message_received',function(bot, message) {
// do something!
bot.reply(message, 'Hello human')
});Read more about hearing things »
Bots can respond to non-verbal events as well, like when a new user joins a channel, a file gets uploaded, or a button gets clicked. These events are handled using an event handling pattern that should look familiar to most developers. Most events in Botkit can be replied to like normal messages.
// wait for a new user to join a channel, then say hi
controller.on('channel_join', function(bot, message) {
bot.reply(message,'Welcome to the channel!');
});See a full list of events and more information about handling them »
Botkit has a flexible system for handling scripted dialog and transactional conversations involving questions, branching logic, and other dynamic behaviors.
In addition to taking direct action in response to a certain message or type of event, Botkit can also take passive action on messages as they move through the application using middlewares. Middleware functions work by changing messages, adding new fields, firing alternate events, and modifying or overriding the behavior of Botkit's core features.
Middleware can be used to adjust how Botkit receives, processes, and sends messages. Here is a list of available middleware endpoints.
// Log every message received
controller.middleware.receive.use(function(bot, message, next) {
// log it
console.log('RECEIVED: ', message);
// modify the message
message.logged = true;
// continue processing the message
next();
});
// Log every message sent
controller.middleware.send.use(function(bot, message, next) {
// log it
console.log('SENT: ', message);
// modify the message
message.logged = true;
// continue processing the message
next();
});