How to intercept bot messages in SDK4 - node.js

Question

I have an SDK 4 bot, logging user interactions to Blob storage. I would also like to log bot responses also. In SDK 3 I did this with something like ...
bot.use({
// Code for handling message receives
receive: function (session, event, next) {
var userId = session.address.user.id;
logger.logUserConversation(session.text, userId, session.address.conversation.id, userId);
next();
},
// Code for handling message sends
send: function (event, next) {
var text = event.text;
if(!event.text) {
text = "Attachments sent";
}
logger.logUserConversation(text, 'bot', event.address.conversation.id, event.address.user.id);
next();
}
});
In SDK 4, I am able to configure middleware which intercepts user activity, but I cannot seem to intercept bot activity. I can't seem to find anything in the documentation, but I am new to SDK 4 and might be missing something.
Anybody know how I can intercept both user and bot events, so that I can log?

Answer 1

There are already 2 samples in Node.js in the official samples repository:
1 called "Logger": https://github.com/Microsoft/BotBuilder-Samples/tree/master/samples/javascript_nodejs/25.logger
1 called "transcript Logger": https://github.com/Microsoft/BotBuilder-Samples/tree/master/samples/javascript_nodejs/26.transcript-logger
I gave a try to the 1st one and can confirm that it logs both user input and bot replies. It is logging every activity, even ConversationUpdate.
See example of transcript generated below:
Activity Received: { type: 'conversationUpdate',
membersAdded: [ { id: '1', name: 'Bot' } ],
channelId: 'emulator',
conversation: { id: '36e25420-ec19-11e8-8040-2ba105e71021|livechat' },
id: '370f7ea0-ec19-11e8-9ee4-fb60855d29c5',
localTimestamp: 2018-11-19T16:36:07.000Z,
recipient: { id: '1', name: 'Bot', role: 'bot' },
timestamp: 2018-11-19T16:36:07.689Z,
from:
{ id: 'fd3fd64d-6297-4e36-98c5-ee398857f2b6',
name: 'User',
role: 'user' },
locale: '',
serviceUrl: 'http://localhost:58083' }
Activity Received: { type: 'conversationUpdate',
membersAdded:
[ { id: 'fd3fd64d-6297-4e36-98c5-ee398857f2b6', name: 'User' } ],
channelId: 'emulator',
conversation: { id: '36e25420-ec19-11e8-8040-2ba105e71021|livechat' },
id: '3711c890-ec19-11e8-9ee4-fb60855d29c5',
localTimestamp: 2018-11-19T16:36:07.000Z,
recipient: { id: '1', name: 'Bot', role: 'bot' },
timestamp: 2018-11-19T16:36:07.705Z,
from:
{ id: 'fd3fd64d-6297-4e36-98c5-ee398857f2b6',
name: 'User',
role: 'user' },
locale: '',
serviceUrl: 'http://localhost:58083' }
Activity Received: { text:
'I am a bot that demonstrates custom logging. We will have a short conversation where I ask a few questions to collect your name and age, then store those values in UserState for later use. after this you will be able to find a log of the conversation in the folder set by the transcriptsPath environment variable Say anything to continue.',
inputHint: 'acceptingInput',
channelId: 'emulator',
serviceUrl: 'http://localhost:58083',
conversation: { id: '36e25420-ec19-11e8-8040-2ba105e71021|livechat' },
from: { id: '1', name: 'Bot', role: 'bot' },
recipient:
{ id: 'fd3fd64d-6297-4e36-98c5-ee398857f2b6',
name: 'User',
role: 'user' },
replyToId: '3711c890-ec19-11e8-9ee4-fb60855d29c5',
type: 'message',
timestamp: 2018-11-19T16:36:08.408Z }
Activity Received: { type: 'message',
text: 'test',
from:
{ id: 'fd3fd64d-6297-4e36-98c5-ee398857f2b6',
name: 'User',
role: 'user' },
locale: '',
textFormat: 'plain',
timestamp: 2018-11-19T16:36:23.421Z,
channelData: { clientActivityId: '1542645367574.7109285295569892.0' },
entities:
[ { type: 'ClientCapabilities',
requiresBotState: true,
supportsTts: true,
supportsListening: true } ],
channelId: 'emulator',
conversation: { id: '36e25420-ec19-11e8-8040-2ba105e71021|livechat' },
id: '406fdad0-ec19-11e8-9ee4-fb60855d29c5',
localTimestamp: 2018-11-19T16:36:23.000Z,
recipient: { id: '1', name: 'Bot', role: 'bot' },
serviceUrl: 'http://localhost:58083' }
Activity Received: { text: 'What is your name, human?',
inputHint: 'expectingInput',
channelId: 'emulator',
serviceUrl: 'http://localhost:58083',
conversation: { id: '36e25420-ec19-11e8-8040-2ba105e71021|livechat' },
from: { id: '1', name: 'Bot', role: 'bot' },
recipient:
{ id: 'fd3fd64d-6297-4e36-98c5-ee398857f2b6',
name: 'User',
role: 'user' },
replyToId: '406fdad0-ec19-11e8-9ee4-fb60855d29c5',
type: 'message',
timestamp: 2018-11-19T16:36:23.443Z }
More details about the code that generated that is available on the project, here. If you look at it, the main point is:
if (activity.value === 'endOfInput') {
console.log(this.conversations[id]);
var transcriptfileName = util.format('%s/log_%s.transcript', process.env.transcriptsPath, id);
fs.writeFile(transcriptfileName, JSON.stringify(this.conversations[id], null, 3), function(err) {
if (err) throw err;
});
delete this.conversations[id];
}