This sample shows how to create a simple echo bot that you can talk to from the console window.
- Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/microsoft/botbuilder-samples.git
- In a terminal, navigate to
samples/javascript_typescript/01.console-echocd samples/javascript_typescript/01.console-echo - Install modules and start the bot
npm i && npm start
In order to run this sample, you must have TypeScript installed. To install TypeScript:
- Navigate to the TypeScript portal.
- Click the Download button.
- Follow the installation instructions for your development environment.
After running npm start, the bot presents a prompt directly in the console window.
Send messages to the bot by typing them into the console. The bot will echo your message back to you.
Adapters such as the ConsoleAdapter provide an abstraction for your bot to work with a variety of environments and messaging platforms.
The adapter is responsible for directing incoming and outgoing communication, authentication, and so on. Adapters for different platforms and messaging technologies differ internally, but achieve the same goal - connecting bots to a stream of messages and events from users. When your bot receives an activity, the adapter wraps up everything about that activity, creates a context object, passes it to your bot's application logic, and sends responses generated by your bot back to the user's channel.
In most situations, we don't work with the adapter directly, but it's good to know it's there and what it does. In this example, we're using the
ConsoleAdapter, which provides a very simple way to exchange messages - they're sent and received via the console window. Using the ConsoleAdapter
is a great way of getting started quickly with Botbuilder. It also allows you to build and test bots that operate on your local machine without any
external API calls or client applications.
Other available adapters connect your bot to the web, or through the BotFramework Connector Service, to many popular messaging platforms.