Update a bot message after responding to a slack dialog - node.js

I'm having some issues to update an interactive message after responding to a slack dialog. I'm using botkit on a node.js server.
Here is my workflow:
User trigger an interactive message via a slash command
User click a button on that message
A dialog pops up, user fill the form and validate
Something is done on the server side
The first message should update
Now, here is the logic I'm using:
User trigger an interactive message via a slash command
Nothing fancy, I use:
controller.on('slash_command', function (bot, message)
Then I parse the command, and send the appropriate message, with the appropriate attachments (buttons)
User click a button on that message
Same, I use the event sent by botkit:
controller.on('interactive_message_callback', function (bot, message)
Then I create a dialog:
var dialog = bot.createDialog(
'Which book?',
JSON.stringify(callback),
'Ok'
)
Here I'm doing something really (really) dirty, and should not be done. But that's the only way I found to update the initial message after the dialog is filled.
The callback_id actually contains an object, with the response_urlof the initial message (and something to identify the form).
A dialog pops up, user fill the form and validate
Something is done on the server side
Here, I use once more the event provided by botkit:
controller.on('dialog_submission', function (bot, message)
then I parse the message.submission.callback_id and detect the response_url. With this, I can create an object I call originalMessage.
The first message should update
At the moment I use :
bot.replyInteractive(originalMessage, 'DONE, everything is saved.');
with originalMessagecontaining the response_url of the first message.
It does work. The first message is being replaced by the new one.
But I'm really not happy with that solution, and was wondering if I was missing something somewhere. I've seen couple apps having that type of workflow, so there must be a way.
Thank you for your help :)

I wrote to Slack to ask about this situation and got a great suggestion from Mark P:
Use the state dialog field to pass the original response_url to the dialog. Then when you receive the dialog data, you can use state instead of response_url.
I just tried it and it worked great. No need to store any state on your own server.
I don't know how that would work exactly with Node and botkit, since that's not what I use.
To flesh this out a bit more:
Someone clicks a button and Slack POSTs about that interaction to your configured "Request URL".
From Slack's payload, get the "response_url" value.
When you call dialog.open in the Slack API, pass along this response_url as the "state" value.
When the dialog is submitted, Slack again POSTs to your "Request URL".
From Slack's payload, get the "state" value and use it as a response_url.
Profit!

This only works if you hold the original message object somewhere on your server for future reference.
So on creating the interactive dialog store it somewhere and add a reference. I use uuids.
let newId = uuid();
messageStore[newId] = message;
var dialog = bot.createDialog(
'My Dialog',
'idPrefix_' + newId,
'Submit'
).addText('Sample Input', 'input', '');
bot.replyWithDialog(message, dialog.asObject());
Then once you get your interactive dialog response back disassemble the prefix and the uuid and get your original message object back from the servers memory. Then use ´replayInteractive` there.
controller.on('dialog_submission', function handler(bot, message) {
if (message.callback_id.indexOf('idPrefix') === 0) {
let id = message.callback_id.substr('idPrefix_'.length);
bot.dialogOk();
let originalMessage = messageStore[id];
bot.replyInteractive(originalMessage, {
text: 'replacing the original message with this.'
});
}
});
Be careful that you do not create a memory leak here. You have to find a way to clean up your messageStore over time.

Related

How to add reaction to a specific message using the ID? (discord.py)

I've been trying for hours a command that react to a message using the ID.
If someone writes !react (the message ID) the bot reacts to the message.
Can someone help me? I have no clue how to do this.
Use a converter to get the discord.Message instance of the message:
#client.command()
async def react(ctx, message: discord.Message):
...
Then use Message.add_reaction to add a reaction to it, which I'm sure you can figure out by yourself.
Keep in mind that in case the message ID is invalid, can't be found, or is not in the same channel as where the command gets called, the converter will fail & throw you an exception. If you pass in the message's URL instead of the ID, Discord will be able to figure out what channel the message was sent in so you can call the command from wherever you want.
You can get a message's URL by selecting Copy Message Link, which might be better for your users as getting the id requires Developer Mode to be on, which most people don't have enabled. The MessageConverter mentioned in the beginning can parse both id's and URL's so you don't have to worry about that part.

Re-prompting users after invalid input

I'm setting up a reset password intent using Dialogflow, where I'm performing some validation via webhooks. Unfortunately, I'm not able to figure out how to reprompt the user in case of failed validation.
I've tried to trigger the intent again using an event, but it doesn't seem to be working. I've also tried setting the same input contexts to trigger the intent again, but neither seem to work.
So I've created 2 parameters within the intent, which are being filled via prompts, following which I am performing the validation. Here's the code:
function getPasscode(agent) {
console.log(agent.parameters);
if(/^\d{6}$/.test(agent.parameters.code1) && agent.parameters.code1 == agent.parameters.code2) {
// Reset passcode call
} else {
return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
agent.add("Your codes don't match. Please try again.");
var output = JSON.stringify({"followupEvent": {"name": "GetPasscode", "data": {}}})
resolve(output);
});
}
}
The bot outputs the text properly, but isn't triggering the event, as intended.
Am I missing something?
Remember that Intents represent what the user does and not what your action is trying to do. In general, you don't "trigger" an Intent - the user does.
So if you're "reprompting" the user - send that prompt in your reply to them. Then make sure the Intent is setup to capture their reply. This may involve in your setting an Output Context to narrow which Intents are evaluated to consider the reply.
You can't both send back a response and trigger an Intent with an event. Sending an event from your fulfillment is almost never needed and, when done, discards anything you may already have set for a response. All it does is cause the Intent with the event registered to it to be triggered. (Your code has two problems in this respect - you both try to send a response, and you're trying to send the followup event incorrectly.)
In your use-case, you do not need to call the event as per my understanding. Better way to do this is :
Set-up intent where you ask and confirm the password and store it
Validate this in your webhook
Here is the pseudo code:
if validationPassed {
call your api to reset password
send reset password confirmation output to user
}
if validationFailed {
setup output context to ask-password intent again
send output to user to re-enter the password
}
As #Prisoner says, you do not trigger an intent, the user does. We do the processing and send the response once the intent is triggered.
Hope it helps.

DialogFlow follow up triggers empty response

I have a DialogFlow intent follow up that I'm having a hard time with. It's the only follow up to my main intent, and the issue I'm having is that when
the incidents.data array is empty it doesn't trigger the conv.ask statement in the else case and causes DialogFlow to throw an empty speech response error. The code looks something like this:
app.intent('metro_timetable - yes', async (conv: any) => {
const incidents = await serviceIncidents.getIncidents();
if (incidents.data.length > 0) {
conv.ask('I have incidents')
} else {
conv.ask(
`I wasn't able to understand your request, could you please say that again?`
);
}
});
incidents.data gets stored in the global scope, and is set deep within
the metro_timetable intent. It stores an incident for the follow up. Because all yes responses trigger the follow up I setup an else case so it catches it if someone says yes when metro_timetable doesn't understand their original request and asks them to repeat it. If incidents.data actually has information to share the dialog triggers correctly and I have incidents is correctly read to the user.
In DialogFlow it looks something like this. Where am I going wrong here?
Your description is a little convoluted how incidents.data actually gets set, but it sounds possible that instead of it being set to an empty array, it isn't set at all. In this case, I suspect that the following happened:
incidents.data would be undefined
Trying to evaluate incidents.data.length would cause an error
Since the program crashes, your webhook doesn't return a result. Since you probably didn't set a result in the UI for the intent, an empty result was returned.
You can probably solve this by doing a test such as (for example)
incidents && incidents.data && incidents.data.length > 0
Your other issue, however, seems to be that you have a Followup Intent set for a scenario where you don't actually want that as the followup. This is one of the reasons you probably shouldn't use Followup Intents but, instead, only set a context when you send a response where that context would make sense, and look for the "Yes" response in the context you define. Then, when metro_timetable doesn't understand the request, you don't set the context and you give an error.
To do this, you would remove the automatically generated metro_timetable-followup context from the two Intents. You'll create your own context, which I'll name timetable for purposes of this example.
In the fulfillment for the metro_timetable Intent, if you respond with something that needs confirmation (ie - when "yes" will be something the user says), you would set the timetable context with something like
conv.contexts.set('timetable',2);
conv.ask('Are you sure?');
You can then create an Intent that checks for timetable as the Incoming Context and has training phrases that are equivalent to "yes". In that Intent, you'd do what you need to and respond.

socket.emit() fires twice - socket.io

I'm making a one-to-one chatroom.
Here is my basic algorithm:
accept user's input (nickname) by a form
fetch all the existing connections and rooms from server
check if this nickname already exists:
if exists, form submission return false ; if not exists, ......
Now I'm having a socket.emit() twice bug on step 2.
Here is my client side code:
$('#login').submit(function(e){
socket.emit('getRoomInfo');
socket.on('receiveRoomInfo',function(info){
//Here has some code to fetch person_room list from server.
//e.g, person_room[nickname]= roomNO
if(person_room[nickname]){
alert('User already exists!');
}else{
//show chat
//hide the form
//update person_room list
//do something
}
});
return false;
});
Here is my server side code:
socket.on('getRoomInfo',function(){
socket.emit('receiveRoomInfo', {'person_room': person_room, 'roomNO': roomNO});
});
Bug Description:
Suppose I open up one form (index.html), and input 'John Snow', submit the form. Everything works fine, form gets hidden, chat shows up. Waiting for
the other connection...
Then I open up another form (index.html), and input 'John Snow', submit the form. Window alerts 'User already exists!'. Form isn't submitted.
I erase 'John Snow' and input 'Arya Stark', submit the form. Window still alerts
'User already exists!', but this time, form gets hidden, chat shows
up.
What I've test:
Login form is only submitted once
On client side, socket.emit('getRoomInfo') is triggered twice under Bug Description 3, which means socket.on('receiveRoomInfo') is triggered twice as well. So what happens is, 'Arya Stark' gets pushed into the list by the first time, and in the second time, it turns out she already exists in the list, Hence window still alerts 'User already exists!'.
I've researched a lot of similar questions, but none of them is the same case as this one.
Thanks for help.
I can fix the code, but I'm not able to tell the reason behind this bug.
I discovered that under once form submission, socket.on('receiveRoomInfo') is triggered twice.
So I set a variable var userExists=false under form.submit(),
after detected if(person_room[nickname]), set userExists=true.
Under socket.on('receiveRoomInfo'), surround all the code implementation with if(!userExists), so that we can make sure socket.on('receiveRoomInfo') is only executed once under once form submission.
I will be waiting for few days for a better idea before I vote my own answer.

Using user message in retryPrompt

In a given moment, my bot asks for a number.
builder.Prompts.number(session, "Cool. What's the number?", {
retryPrompt: "I couldn't understand $%##. Could you type it again?"
});
I need the message to contain the user response instead of $%##. Is there a way to do it? I tried to use session.message.text and results.response, but these are still from the outer function because of closure.
For anyone looking for this answer: currently, there is no way to change the message inside the Prompt dialog.
I looked up the code for BotFramework for nodeThe message you send as retryPrompt is as is, without replacements.

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