Developing Custom Bot Skills

A "skill" is a mechanism to reuse chatbot code that can be shared across multiple bots. A skill is just a plain JavaScript object with two optional properties:

  • handle - a function which will be invoked when there is an event
  • app - an express app

Example Skills

Ping Skill

The following shows the structure of a "Ping Skill" which will reply "pong" to anyone who types "ping." 

const handle = async event => {
  const { type, text, group, bot } = event
  if (type === 'Message4Bot' && text === 'ping') {
    await bot.sendMessage(group.id, { text: 'pong' })
    return true // event handled
  }
  return false // event not handled
}
const app = express()
app.get('/hello', async (req, res) => {
  res.send('world')
})
const pingSkill = { handle, app }

In addition to containing the simple messaging logic, the above skill exposes a new page at uri path '/hello', which, when visited, will display "world".

Install the Skill

import createApp from 'ringcentral-chatbot/dist/apps'

const app = createApp(undefined, [
    pingSkill
])

In the sample above app above is a chatbot app, and it has all the behaviors of pingSkill.

"catch-all" skill

This following "Catch All" skill defines default behavior for your bot for all commands it does not recognize. 

const handle = async (event, handled) => {
    if (!handled) {
      console.log(`This is an unhandled event`)
    } else {
      // event has been handled by other skills already
    }
}
const catchAllSkill = { handle }

Catch-all skill should be the last in the skills list

Real projects

Ping Skill

Google Drive Skill

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