You are currently viewing Using Templates in SUSI FBbot

Using Templates in SUSI FBbot

The SUSI AI Fbbot previously showed rss and table type replies as plain text to the user. To enhance the user experience, Facebook provides with templates which can be used in it’s messenger. Using those, we show rss and table type replies wrapped up in a better U.I. creating a better user experience.

The 4 basic template structures that can be used for this task are:

  1. Button template
  2. Generic template
  3. List template
  4. Receipt template

List template is used in SUSI A.I. Fbbot because rss reply and table type reply both are lists of data.
The basic syntax for list template with reference to Fb official docs is:

"message": {
    "attachment": {
        "type": "template",
        "payload": {
            "template_type": "list",
            "top_element_style": "compact",
            "elements": [
                {
                    "title": "Classic White T-Shirt",
                    "subtitle": "100% Cotton, 200% Comfortable",
                    "default_action": {
                        "type": "web_url",
                        "url": "https://peterssendreceiveapp.ngrok.io/view?item=100"
                    },
                    "buttons": [
                        {
                            "title": "Buy",
                            "type": "web_url",
                            "url": "https://peterssendreceiveapp.ngrok.io/shop?item=100"                     
                        }
                    ]                
                }
            ]
        }
    }
}

This code shows a reply to the user like this:

If we want to show a “View more” button at the end of the list, we can add a “buttons” key and an array as its value which will have information regarding all the buttons we want to show.

The code below will show a “View more” button at the end of the list:

"elements": [
            {
                // all the elements, like shirt in the above case               
            }
       ],
       "buttons": [
            {
                "title": "View More",
                "type": "postback",
                "payload": "payload"                        
               }
       ]

Let’s learn how to incorporate these features to rss results in SUSI Fbbot:

When sending a reply using list template, “elements” key must have an array type value which will be constituted of list items. Therefore, we need to push all the rss results into that array and set it as the value of the “elements” key.

Let’s develop the code part:

Fetch the JSON object from SUSI API url with query as “why” i.e. http://api.susi.ai/susi/chat.json?q=why. Let body be a variable which stores the returned JSON object.

  • The below code fills up an array (namely elementsVal) with all the rss results:
var elementsVal = [];
var metaCnt = body.answers[0].metadata.count;
for(var i=0;i<((metaCnt>4)?4:metaCnt);i++){
    elementsVal.push(
        {
            "title": body.answers[0].data[i].title,
            "subtitle": body.answers[0].data[i].link
        }
    );
}
  • Setting the elementsVal array as the value of the “elements” key:
var message = {
    "type": "template",
    "payload": 
    {
        "template_type": "list",
        "top_element_style": "compact",
        "elements": elementsVal
    }
};
  • Sending this message as a reply to the user:
sendTextMessage(sender, message);

Same procedure can be used to render table type replies in the bot using the list template.

Generic template provided by Facebook can also used to render the web and table type replies. This template helps in showing the results in square boxes, which can be changed using left or right arrows.

Resources:

  1. By Mikhail Larionov from Facebook blogsList templates and check box plugin
  2. By Slobodan Stojanović from smashing magazineDevelop a chat bot with node js.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.