Recently Facebook launched its Facebook Messenger bot API. Since then there has been a surge of developers and jobs opening up for chatbots. Being a bit curious about how easy it is to make a chatbot, what with companies and small time developers already having bots for services such as IRC, I decided to dip my toes into the bot developer world.
Since then I have been following this messenger bot guide, Develop your first Facebook messenger bot in PHP by Adnan Siddiqi, with a couple of google searches added in.
Previously your app was default connected to the various Facebook products. But now, after making a new basic app, you have to "+Add Product." Then you have to find the messenger product and you'll then get the Messenger Platform "Getting Started" message button.
For example he already has cURL on his machine, either because it's UNIX based or because he'd previously downloaded it for his Windows machine. Here's the link to download the cURL binary (a.k.a. exe file) if you also need it: https://curl.haxx.se/dlwiz/ User the download wizard. Note: You're likely going to need the x86 version unless you have IA-64 (Intel Architecture 64) then you'd use that version.
Later on, I had to learn how to manipulate my files using the windows command prompt to make .htaccess files since Windows doesn't let you make those files naturally. It involved the "ren" command which I'm guessing is short for rename with the current file name location and the new name.
Right now everything works but cURL in my XAMPP setup. But without cURL my messenger app can't send messages back in the proper format to the messenger API and therefore it is only a silently receiving non talking bot. :(
Since then I have been following this messenger bot guide, Develop your first Facebook messenger bot in PHP by Adnan Siddiqi, with a couple of google searches added in.
Previously your app was default connected to the various Facebook products. But now, after making a new basic app, you have to "+Add Product." Then you have to find the messenger product and you'll then get the Messenger Platform "Getting Started" message button.
For example he already has cURL on his machine, either because it's UNIX based or because he'd previously downloaded it for his Windows machine. Here's the link to download the cURL binary (a.k.a. exe file) if you also need it: https://curl.haxx.se/dlwiz/ User the download wizard. Note: You're likely going to need the x86 version unless you have IA-64 (Intel Architecture 64) then you'd use that version.
Later on, I had to learn how to manipulate my files using the windows command prompt to make .htaccess files since Windows doesn't let you make those files naturally. It involved the "ren" command which I'm guessing is short for rename with the current file name location and the new name.
Right now everything works but cURL in my XAMPP setup. But without cURL my messenger app can't send messages back in the proper format to the messenger API and therefore it is only a silently receiving non talking bot. :(
