msgrtestbot

• This is a simple nodejs chatbot using Visual Studio Code IDE and Facebook Messenger Platform
• The chatbot is deployed in Heroku
• The project is using express framework
• The project is using nodemon to restart the node server automatically whenever there is a file change -- (npm install --save-dev nodemon babel-cli babel-preset-env)

Setup

1. Clone the project

• Make sure you have a nodejs and git installed in the machine
• In your terminal type command npm init to initialise the project
• Fill in the required fields, make sure you do not change the entry point. The default entry point is index.js
• After filling up the fields, in your terminal type "npm install"
• This will install express framework. EJS for view engine. And body-parser to get data from front-end to back-end
• Create a .env file. This is where you are going to store your variables such as your verify token.

2. Create a Heroku app, facebook page, and a facebook app

2.1 Create a Heroku app

• Register to https://heroku.com/
• Create your application
• If you have a github repository, just link the repository to heroku. If none, you can use heroku as your repository.
• Deploy your app to heroku
• Config your variables to heroku. Since the .env variables is not pushed, this will enable the project to make use of the variables being used by the project

2.2 Facebook page

• Create a facebook page

2.3 Facebook app

• Log your developer account or account used to create the page
• Follow the docs on how to config the webhook https://developers.facebook.com/docs/messenger-platform/getting-started/webhook-setup