Creating Your Own Bot

Once you get the experience of using the provided bots you are likely to want to create your own. For this purpose, we have created a template framework that you can use called 'Template-Y'.

This bot keeps your aiml and code separate from program-y so that you do not get corrupted from GitHub pulls.

This tutorial takes you through a couple of examples to build 2 types of bot

• Console Bot
• Web Chat Bot

Download Template-Y

We use the admin tool to download Template-Y. First create a folder and then run the tool from inside the folder as follows

(In the example below, use 'python3' on Linux and OSX and 'python' on Windows)

$ python3 -m programy.admin.tool download template-y
Downloading [y-bot] from [https://github.com/keiffster/template-y/archive/master.zip]
[.............................................................................]
Download complete

If downloading on Linux or OSX, you should see the follow

To run y-bot bot in console mode, use the following commands

	cd scripts/xnix
	./template-y.sh 

If you have downloaded on Windows, then you should see the following

To run y-bot bot in console mode, use the following commands

	cd scripts/windows
	./template-y.cmd 

Running either of these and you should see something similar to the following

Running Console Client

Loading, please wait...
/home/keith/mybots/programy/scripts/xnix
No bot root argument set, defaulting to [../../config/xnix]
Found a total of 1 errors in your grammars, check your errors store
Found a total of 6 duplicates in your grammars, check your duplicates store
Y-Bot, App: v3.0.0 Beta 1 Grammar v1.6.0, initiated March 14, 2017
Hi, how can I help you today?
>>> hello
Good morning.
>>> what are you
I'm a chatbot.
>>> 

Use Ctrl-C to exit the bot

Modifying Your Bot

Template-y directory structure is designed to allow you to start editing your onw files.

• config
  • windows - Windows specific configuration files
  • xnix - Linux/OSX specific configuration files
• scripts
  • windows - Windows specific batch files
  • xnix - Linux/OSX specific shell scripts
• src - Location to add your own code for extensions, services etc
• storage - Location for all data files, this is where you aiml files go
• test - Unit test files that accompany the source files in the 'src' folder

Web Chat Client

Program-y uses the Python Flask framework for most of the Web and REST clients it provides. Idally you should have basic experience of creating a Flask app before using the WebChat client. However, if all you want to do is get a WebChat client up and running to just add/modify grammars then these instructions should get you up and running

Template-y ships with a shell script for Linux/OSX and a batch file for windows which execute the WebChat client.

On Linux & OSX

$ cd scripts
$ cd xnix
$ ./template-webchat.sh
Initiating WebChat Client...
No bot root argument set, defaulting to [../../config/xnix]
Found a total of 0 errors in your grammars, check your errors store
Found a total of 0 duplicates in your grammars, check your duplicates store
WebChat Client running on 127.0.0.1:8090
WebChat Client running in http mode, careful now !
 * Serving Flask app "client" (lazy loading)
 * Environment: production
   WARNING: Do not use the development server in a production environment.
   Use a production WSGI server instead.
 * Debug mode: off

You can now point your browser at http://127.0.0.1:8090

On Windows use the following

$ cd scripts
$ cd windows
$ template-webchat.cmd
Initiating WebChat Client...
No bot root argument set, defaulting to [../../config/xnix]
Found a total of 0 errors in your grammars, check your errors store
Found a total of 0 duplicates in your grammars, check your duplicates store
WebChat Client running on 127.0.0.1:8090
WebChat Client running in http mode, careful now !
 * Serving Flask app "client" (lazy loading)
 * Environment: production
   WARNING: Do not use the development server in a production environment.
   Use a production WSGI server instead.
 * Debug mode: off

Again you can now point your browser at http://127.0.0.1:8090

Modifying the WebChat UI Code

The html, css and javascript files for webchat are location in 'src/templatey/clients/restful/flask/webchat/static' Here you will find the webchat.html file that displays the bot windows and the y-bot.js javascript file, that uses JQuerty to call back to the bot

Unless you are fundamentally change the way the bot operates, you should not have to modify the file 'src/templatey/clients/restful/flask/webchat/client.py' Python source file

Modifying the WebChat Bot Data

If you want to start adding/modifying grammars, maps or sets, then you can modify the files found in the storage folders as described above.