Trigger a specific dialog in Bot via Directline API - node.js

Question

I'm working on breaking my bot repo into 2 separate repos
A repo to purely handle bot logic
A repo to handle custom chat via directline
Currently , we have a feature where we can trigger the bot to start a specific dialog if its mentioned as a parameter in the URL. So something like
https://foo.com/?param=bar
would trigger the bar dialog
This is the code that handles it
function(userId, conversationId, params, token){
return new Promise((resolve, reject)=>{
var _directlineAddress = {
bot: {"id":config.BOT.ID, "name": config.BOT.HANDLE},
channelId: "directline",
serviceUrl: config.BOT.DIRECTLINE_URL,
useAuth: true,
user:{"id": userId},
"conversation": {"id": conversationId}
}
if(params.options){
var _re = /^\?(\w+)*=(\w+)*/
var _programType = _re.exec(params.options);
if (_programType[1] === "foo") {
var _dialogId = "*:/foo";
}
else {
var _dialogId = "*:/" + _programType[1];
}
} else {
var _dialogId = "*:/";
var _specialParams = {"sessionId":token};
}
bot.beginDialog(_directlineAddress, _dialogId, _specialParams, function(err){
else{
resolve();
}
});
})
};
Since i'm splitting the directline from the bot logic , i will no longer be having access to the bot object. therefore bot.beginDialog would not work here
Is there a way i can trigger the dialog by posting to the Directline API?

Answer 1

No. With Direct Line you will be able to send messages to the bot. I guess that a way to go here will be to define a convention message that you will send via Direct Line and that the bot logic will know that it will have to start a dialog based on it.