DHL_UnitedByHCL_WebApp

A dhl python chatbot for Facebook Messenger.

This is a prototype app for UnitedByHcl Hackathon on the theme Artificial Inteligence Challenge 3 : Create an Assistive Chatbot – For DHL Develop a chatbot to help simplify some of the DHL’s user centric problems.

You can visit my deployment of the example online, deploy your own copy to Heroku or run an instance in your local computer.

Deploying to Heroku

Follow the instructions provided in the Facebook quickstart tutorial for creating a page and an app.

Deploy your own copy to Heroku with this button (which requires a free Heroku account) and set the VERIFY_TOKEN and FACEBOOK_TOKEN environment variables to the values you get from following the tutorial.

Running locally

Requirements

Python 2.7
Make sure you have pip (pip --version)
pip install virtualenv to install virtual environment
Facebook messenger (you can also use the web version at https://www.messenger.com)
Git

Clone the repository into a directory of your own choice.

git clone https://github.com/Avenues3/DHL_UnitedByHCL_WebApp.git cd DHL_UnitedByHCL_WebApp

Then, to run:

Install requirements: pip install -r requirements.txt (you almost certainly want to do this in a virtualenv).
Migrate: python manage.py migrate

Setting up a Facebook app for Facebook messenger

You're going to need a publicly routed https address. I used ngrok to create a tunnel to my local development machine.Download ngrok (https://ngrok.com/) , go to a new tab on your terminal and start it with ngrok http 8000

At this point, you will have to add the URLs to ALLOWED_HOSTS in dhl/settings.py.

The server will need to be started for you to verify the webhook. See "Starting the server" below.
Follow the instructions provided in the Facebook quickstart tutorial for creating a page and an app.
Set the VERIFY_TOKEN and FACEBOOK_TOKEN environment variables to the values you get from following the tutorial.

Starting the server

Is just a matter of