Advanced Routing

Resolving actions

Text is always treated as action, so these two routes are matched same, when the /cat action is issued.

const { Router } = require('wingbot');
const bot = new Router();

bot.use(req => req.action() === '/cat', (req, res) => {
    res.text('Matched!');
});

bot.use('/cat', (req, res) => { res.text('Matched!'); });

module.exports = bot;

Actual path resolver also takes into account the fact, that routers can be nested.

Simple text actions

It's possible to use reqular expression to match the specific text input. Without any AI tool.

const { Router } = require('wingbot');
const bot = new Router();

bot.use(/h[ea]llo|hallo|ciao/, (req, res) => {
    res.text('Matched:')
        .text(req.text(true)); // echoes normalized text
});

bot.use((req, res) => { res.text('Not matched'); });

module.exports = bot;

And the code works like this. It matches lot of words, because the regular expression does not match whole words:

*-----------------------------------*
|                             Hello |
| Matched:                          |
| hello                             |
|                                   |
|                      Hello robot! |
| Matched:                          |
| hello-robot                       |
|                                   |
|                         Hi! Čiaó! |
| Matched:                          |
| hi-ciao                           |
|                                   |
|                           HiHello |
| hihello                           |
*-----------------------------------*

Integrating with AI prediction

It's ofcourse possible to make integration with 3rd party service. Function should return a boolean, where true === CONTINUE and false === BREAK.

const { Router } = require('wingbot');
const keyworder = require('keyworder');
const bot = new Router();

bot.use((req) => {
    if (req.action()) {
        // skip events with specific action (postback, quick reply, ref...)
        return false;
    }
    return keyworder.resolve(req.text())
        .then(intents => intents
            .some(intent => intent.tag === 'greeting' && intent.score > 0.95)
        );

}, (req, res) => {
    res.text('Matched:');
});

module.exports = bot;

Redirecting flow with Post Back

Sometimes there is need to redirect the conversation flow. For these purposes, there is a postBack(action: string, data: object?) function.

const { Router } = require('wingbot');
const bot = new Router();

bot.use('world', (req, res) => {
    res.text('world');
});

bot.use((req, res, postBack) => {
    res.text('Hello');
    postBack('world');
});

module.exports = bot;

The result of postBack looks like this

*-----------------------------------*
|                       Let's start |
| hello                             |
| world                             |
*-----------------------------------*

Or conditions - addressable text microiteractions

Some microinteractions can be triggered by text and also by action, so why to separate them.

!addressable microiteractions has global scope

const bot = new Router();

bot.use(['world', /^world-text$/], (req, res) => {
    res.text('world');
});

bot.use((req, res, postBack) => {
    res.text('Hello', {
        world: 'quick reply'
    }).expected('./');
});

module.exports = bot;

The result looks like this:

*-----------------------------------*
|                       Let's start |
| Hello                             |
|                             world |
| world                             |
*-----------------------------------*

Handling expected text messages

For clean code it's good to handle text for quick replies separately.

const bot = new Router();

bot.use((req, res, postBack) => {
    res.text('Hello', {
        world: 'quick reply'
    }).expected('expectedRoute');
});

bot.use('expectedRoute', /^foo$/, (req, res) => res.text('foooooo'));

bot.use('expectedRoute', /^bar$/, (req, res) => res.text('barrrrr'));

module.exports = bot;

The result looks like this:

*-----------------------------------*
|                       Let's start |
| Hello                             |
|                               bar |
| bar                               |
*-----------------------------------*