03 Receive and send messages

You can use the Bot Connector API to connect your bot to multiple channels, such as Messenger, Slack or Kik.

Once you've connected your bot to channels on the platform, you can use this SDK to receive and send messages.

Usage

Start by instantiating either a Client or a Connect object, as shown below:

import recastai

client = new recastai.Client('YOUR_TOKEN')
connect = client.connect

# ...is the same as...

connect = recastai.Connect('YOUR_TOKEN')

Connect

You can now connect your bot, access all incoming messages and send replies accordingly.

You can find more details on the message format your bot can send here.

Sinatra

from recastai import Connect
from flask import Flask, request, jsonify

connect = Connect('YOUR_TOKEN')

def bot(request):
  message = connect.parse_message(request)

  # Get the content of the message
  content = message.content

  # Get the type of the message (text, picture,...)
  type = message.type

  # Add a reply, and send it
  replies = [{type: 'text', content: 'Hello, world'}]

  connect.send_message(replies, message.conversation_id)

  return jsonify(status=200)

app = Flask(__name__)
@app.route('/', methods=['POST'])
def root():
  return bot(request)

app.run()

Connect with Recast.AI

This is a small example using both the Connect and the Request APIs to receive messages from a channel, send the content to Recast.AI to get back the bot reply, and send it back to the channel.

import recastai

from flask import Flask, request, jsonify

client = recastai.Client('YOUR_TOKEN')

def bot(request):
	message = client.connect.parse_message(request)

  # Get the content of the message
  content = message.content

  # Get the type of the message (text, picture,...)
  type = message.type

  # Get the sender_id, which we'll use as a conversation token.
  conversation_token = message.sender_id

  # If it's a text message...
  if type == 'text':
    # ...make a request to Recast.AI to get the bot reply...
    response = client.request.converse_text(content, conversation_token)

    # ...extract the reply...
    reply = response.reply

    # ...and send it back to the channel
    connect.send_message([{ 'type': 'text', 'content': reply}], message.conversation_id)

  return jsonify(status=200)


app = Flask(__name__)
@app.route('/', methods=['POST'])
def root():
  return bot(request)

app.run()

Methods

Send messages to a specific conversation

Method	Params	Return
send_message()	messages: Array[Dict], conversation_id: String	Dict: the API response

This methods allow you to push a message to a specific conversation.

messages = [
  {
    'type': 'text',
    'content': 'Roger that',
  }
]

connect.send_message(messages, 'A_CONVERSATION_ID')

Broadcast messages to all bot conversations

Method	Params	Return
broadcast_message()	messages: Array[Dict]	Dict: the API response

This method allow you to push a message to all the conversations of your bot.

messages = [
  {
    'type': 'text',
    'content': 'Roger that',
  }
]

connect.broadcast_message(messages)

Message

A Message object is what you receive when calling the Connect#parse_message method.

Attributes

An instance of the Message class provides each of the following attributes:

Attributes	Type
conversation_Id	String: the id of the conversation this message belongs to
content	String: the content of the message
type	String: the type of the message
chat_id	String: the native ID of the chat
sender_id	String: the native ID of the message's sender
attachment	Object: the raw content of the message