botbldr

Get up and running quickly with BotBuilder v4 with bot classes that add features to context and hide the messy plumbing.

You can use predefine classes for console and service bots, or bake your own.

This is an experimental project subject to change without notice. Use at your own risk. Not an officially supported Microsoft product.

How do I use it?

npm install --save botbuilder-botbldr

What does it look like?

Here's an echobot using the predefined ConsoleBot:

import { ConsoleBot } from 'botbuilder-botbldr';

const bot = new ConsoleBot();

bot.onTurn(async context => {
    context.conversationState.count = context.conversationState.count === undefined ? 0 : context.conversationState.count + 1;
    await context.sendActivity(`${context.conversationState.count}: You said "${context.request.text}"`);
});

Swap out ConsoleBot for ServiceBot to test your bot with Emulator then run it in the cloud in the Azure Bot Service.

Both use an extended version of BotContext called StateContext which adds .conversationState and .userState properties to context. Any changes you make to either of these are automatically persisted at the end of each turn. By default they use MemoryStorage as a state storage provider, but you can pass in any you like, e.g.

const bot = new ConsoleBot(new FileStorage("path_to_your_file"));

If you use TypeScript you can define types for these properties:

import { ConsoleBot } from 'botbuilder-botbldr';

interface MyConversationState {
    count: number;
}

interface MyUserState {
    name: string;
}

const bot = new ConsoleBot<MyConversationState, MyUserState>();

bot.onTurn(async context => {
    context.conversationState.count = context.conversationState.count === undefined ? 0 : context.conversationState.count + 1;
    await context.sendActivity(`${context.conversationState.count}: You said "${context.request.text}"`);
});

I don't like how you extended context (or I want to extend it more)

No problem, you can make your own extended context following the recipe used in /src/StateContext.ts. Then extend BaseBot following the recipe used in /src/StateBot.ts and /src/ConsoleBot.ts

Can I add my own middleware?

Sure, just add:

bot.use(new BestMiddlewareEver())

before your call to bot.onRequest

Can I use proactive messages?

Yes!

const calledBySomeEventSomewhere = async (activity: Activity) => {
    await bot.continueConversation(activity, async context => {
        await context.sendActivity(`Something happened!`);
    });
}