Mattermost Bot Sample

Overview

This sample Bot shows how to use the Mattermost Go driver to interact with a Mattermost server, listen to events and respond to messages. Documentation for the Go driver can be found here.

Highlights of APIs used in this sample:

Log in to the Mattermost server
Create a channel
Modify user attributes
Connect and listen to WebSocket events for real-time responses to messages
Post a message to a channel

This Bot Sample was tested with Mattermost server version 7.5.2.

Setup Server Environment

Via Docker And Docker-Compose

1 - Ensure Docker and Docker-Compose are installed on your system.

2 - Run docker-compose up -d --build and the mattermost client will be built and will expose the port 8065 to your system's localhost.

3 - Run ./add_users.sh. The login information for the Mattermost client will be printed.

4 - Log into your mattermost instance using these credentials and create a bot account following these instructions.

5 - Copy example.env to .env and fill in the bot token (obtained from the previous step), team name, etc. Alternatively, just provide your credentials as environment variables.

5 - Start the Bot.

make run

You can verify the Bot is running when

Logged in to mattermost appears on the command line.
Hi! I am a bot. is posted in your specified channel.

See "Test the Bot" for testing instructions

Via Direct System Install/Setup

1 - Install or upgrade to Mattermost server version 3.10+, and verify that the Mattermost server is running on http://localhost:8065.

On the commands below, if you are running Mattermost server version 5.0 or later, use ./bin/mmctl. If you are running version 4.10 or earlier, use ./bin/platform.

Learn more about the mmctl CLI tool in the Mattermost documentation.

2 - Create a team for the Bot to run. If you have an existing team, you may skip this step and replace botsample with your existing team in subsequent steps.

./bin/mmctl team create --name botsample --display_name "Sample Bot playground" --email "admin@example.com"

3 - Create a user, bill, which we will use to log in and interact with the Bot.

./bin/mmctl user create --email="bill@example.com" --password="Password1!" --username="bill"

4 - (Optional) Give bill system_admin permissions.

./bin/mmctl roles system_admin bill

5 - Log in to http://localhost:8065 as bill and verify the account was created successfully.

6 - Create a bot account following these instructions.

7 - Copy example.env to .env and fill in the bot token (obtained from the previous step), team name, etc. Alternatively, just provide your credentials as environment variables.

Setup Bot Development Environment

1 - Follow the Developer Machine Setup instructions to setup the bot development environment.

2 - Clone the GitHub repository to run the sample.

git clone https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost-bot-sample-golang.git
cd mattermost-bot-sample-golang

3 - Log into your mattermost instance using these credentials and create a bot account following these instructions.

4 - Copy example.env to .env and fill in the bot token (obtained from the previous step), team name, etc. Alternatively, just provide your credentials as environment variables.

5 - Run with

make run

You can verify the Bot is running when

Logged in to mattermost appears on the command line.
Hi! I am a bot. is posted in your specified channel.

Test the Bot

1 - Log in to the Mattermost server as bill@example.com and Password1!.

2 - Join your specified channel.

3 - Post a message in the channel such as hello? to see if the Bot responds. You should see a response if the Bot is running.

Stop the Bot

1 - In the terminal window, press CTRL+C to stop the bot.