chatfuel-broadcast

A simplified client for using the Chatfuel broadcast API which includes rate limiting.

Installation

The module is installed via npm or yarn:

npm install chatfuel-broadcast

or

yarn add chatfuel-broadcast

Usage

Import or require the module in order to use it:

// For ES6 modules
import chatfuelBroadcast from 'chatfuel-broadcast';

// For CommonJS modules
const chatfuelBroadcast = require('chatfuel-broadcast');

Create an options object which contains the mandatory parameters of botId, token and userId. You will find your botId in the Chatfuel dashboard URL for your bot and the token is defined in your dashboard. Note that you can only set either blockId or blockName but you can't pass both parameters. The blockId can be seen in the URL of the Chatfuel bot, or you can just use the block name that you define.

Facebook message tags are now mandatory and an error will be thrown if one isn't passed. See Facebook's message tags documentation for a list of valid tags. You can also supply the NON_PROMOTIONAL_SUBSCRIPTION tag but your page must be an approved new page under the Facebook News Page Index (NPI).

Note: In addition to a the valid Facebook Messenger tags, there is a single Chatfuel-specific tag called UPDATE. You can ONLY use this tag with the broadcast API to send a message if you have recieved an interaction from your user within the previous 24 hours. Your chatbot will get banned if you fail to adhere to this rule.

Add in the attributes property for the Chatfuel user attributes you want to set:

const options = {
    // Mandatory options
    botId: '<chatfuel-bot-id>',
    token: '<chatfuel-token>',
    userId: '<chatfuel-user-id>',
    messageTag: '<facebook-message-tag>',

    // Only one of these is needed
    // An error will be thrown if both are passed
    blockName: '<chatfuel-block-name-to-return-to>',
    blockId: '<chatfuel-block-id-to-return-to>',

    // User attributes which will be set in Chatfuel
    attributes: {
        myAttribute: 'myValue',
        anotherAttribute: 'anotherValue'
    }
};

Finally, call the broadcast function. It's Promise-based so it expects a then-able function. Add a catch function for error handling.

// Promise-based response
chatfuelBroadcast(options)
    .then((responseMessage) => {
        // responseMessage will be 'ok'
        console.log('Call succeeded');
    })
    .catch(error => {
        console.log(error.message);
    });

Expected responses

If the request is successful the API will return an ok string (which is the response from Chatfuel's API).

If an API request is malformed, for example if you have an invalid block name or block ID, or you supply an incorrect Messenger tag or are missing request data, then the API will throw an error. The error message will inform you of the incorrect or missing data.

Rate limiting

The Chatfuel documentation states that you can broadcast up to 25 request per second (RPS) using their broadcast API. This package sets this rate limit for you and avoids you having to add additional rate limiting logic in your own code. Note that the broadcast API can still fail if you pass incorrect data (e.g. a bad block name or block ID) so ensure you use an error handler.

Running the tests

The unit tests can be run using npm or yarn:

npm test
yarn test

Licence

This project is licensed under the MIT Licence - see the LICENCE file for details.