e-shop-bot: A Python repository from DonnC

E-shop whatsapp bot template

A some-what bare template for whatsapp chatbot..originally made using twilio sandbox
original proposal was tailored towards an electronic startup that sells electronic components
can be extended or changed to suit any business type with minor or major tweaks

this is not an AI-ML bot, an example of an AI bot with ML can be found here, ZIMSEC bot
This example bot On development app, has many sides, here i show 2, how it works for both a client and the moderator
..seperately with no problem 😎
Click this link to whatsapp bot. After that you can type hie or hello or start.
Consumer / client side
Moderator side

Well, as much as i try to give out my thoughts to the public, EXCEPTION HANDLING is to be done by the interested personnel in this project

This whatsapp bot makes use of twilio sandbox for prototyping
Needs twilio credentials, login to your twilio console and replace yr keys in credentials.py
Can host on heroku free tier and choose automatic deployment from your github master branch
bulksms service can be used depending on use case, one such service is bulksmszw and ther is a library for that at bulksms zw api library
or if its hot-recharge services like TechZim airtime bot, can integrate it using the hot-recharge zw api library *still testing, raise issues and star for updates.

whether this is a good design structure | not, this worked for me - you can change depending on your project or business model
in src folder, it handles all the bot functionalities subdivided into different modules to aid in upgrading the bot later
most bot utilities are implemented inside utils.py
statistics are in a seperate folder e.g stats
commands and help texts are in their seperate e.g folder

clone or fork this repo!
for cloud serving, you can use heroku free account and choose automatic deploy from your bot github repository
needs a twilio account and twilio tokens and sandbox ready, check the twilio website
for local testing, fire up your flask server and run ngrok (needs Ngrok installed)
you can google on the internet how to do so, there is a tutorial about that
run some tests, and show off to friends, family and clients 😉

after successful deployment to heroku, use your free heroku url to add to twilio console on callback webhook
as https://your-heroku-url/whatsapp and let magic rain, your bot is automatically now linked between the 2 and is now online 24/7
for local testing with ngrok, use https://your-temporary-ngrok-https-url/whatsapp on the twilio console. Dont use the http url
Make bots like what the banks have, like what that whatsapp bot you admired works, be creative 👨‍🎨

If you like this sort of bot template helpful give it a STAR 🌟 or FORK 😃 | FOLLOW. It motivates..I might bring an extra open source free project as a head-start next that you might find helpful too 😉