PenPal allows students to find other students at their school who are at a similar age, with similar hobbies. PenPal is built using the Microsoft Bot Framework and is active on Kik as /penpal01.
Penpal uses the following:
- Microsoft Bot Framework
- Microsoft Bot Framework is the 'middleman' that connects penpal to Kik.
- Through the framework, it is easy to configure penpal to work with the following services: Skype, email, Facebook messenger, GroupMe, Slack, Telegram, Twilio (SMS). You would only need to click through a few pages to set up authentication of dev API ids and keys on each different service you want to set up.
- Getting data
- Generate data online or connect to your own database.
Run setup.sh in bash or go through the following steps:
-
API keys
- Insert your Microsoft BotFramework API keys in
app.js, by replacing the strings'APP_ID'and'APP_PASSWORD'.
- Insert your Microsoft BotFramework API keys in
-
Node
- navigate to
srcand run the following commands in the command line:npm installto install npm dependenciesnode app.jsto run the application on your computer
- navigate to
The easiest way to test is using Microsoft's Bot Framework Emulator. It will allow you to test offline without having to get API keys or set up a server in the cloud.
During testing, everytime you update the code, you will need to stop the running node app.js process and run it again so it will use the new code, and also close and restart the Bot Framework Emulator, so that it will clear up any saved information, eg. the saved Profile information. This is a result of the way the Bot Framework Emulator works, and is not caused by penpal.
Subscribing to penpal01 on kik.
Completing profile and recommended a penpal by penpal01 on kik.