This project is an application skeleton for a Facebook Messenger Chatbot using Java, Spring Boot, and messenger4j. You can use it to quickly bootstrap your chatbot projects and write your first Messenger Chatbot within minutes.
It's a pre-configured Maven project containing a sample chatbot application and all required dependencies.
The sample application is a port of the official Messenger Platform NodeJS Showcase. For information on how to setup your chatbot you can follow along with the Setup Guide.
- Git
- JDK 8 or later
- Maven 3.0 or later
To get started you can simply clone this repository using git:
git clone https://github.com/messenger4j/messenger4j-spring-boot-quickstart-template.git
cd messenger4j-spring-boot-quickstart-template
In order to get your chatbot working you have to provide the following settings:
messenger4j.appSecret = ${MESSENGER_APP_SECRET}
messenger4j.verifyToken = ${MESSENGER_VERIFY_TOKEN}
messenger4j.pageAccessToken = ${MESSENGER_PAGE_ACCESS_TOKEN}
The configuration is located in src/resources/application.properties.
With the default configuration you can provide these values through the environment variables MESSENGER_APP_SECRET, MESSENGER_VERIFY_TOKEN,
and MESSENGER_PAGE_ACCESS_TOKEN.
You can run the application from the command line using:
mvn spring-boot:run
Or you can build a single executable JAR file that contains all the necessary dependencies, classes, and resources with:
mvn clean package
Then you can run the JAR file with:
java -jar target/*.jar
Instead of mvn you can also use the maven-wrapper ./mvnw to ensure you have everything necessary to run the Maven build.
Please note that the following example names are already in use and are just for illustration purposes.
- Git
- Heroku CLI (for detailed information refer to Heroku CLI)
- execute
git clone https://github.com/messenger4j/messenger4j-spring-boot-quickstart-template.git - execute
cd messenger4j-spring-boot-quickstart-template - execute
heroku create <heroku app name>, e.g.heroku create messenger4j-heroku-app
- open
https://www.facebook.com/pages/create - select a suitable Category, e.g.
Brand or Product-->Product / Service - enter a Name (the name of the Chatbot), e.g.
Messenger4j Demo
- open
https://developers.facebook.com/apps - click the 'Add a New App' button
- enter the Display Name, e.g.
messenger4j-fb-app - select the Category: 'Apps for Messenger'
- click the 'Create App ID' button
- Section 'Token Generation': Select your created FB Page, e.g.
Messenger4j Demo - copy the 'Page Access Token' to the clipboard
- execute
heroku config:set MESSENGER_PAGE_ACCESS_TOKEN=<page access token> - navigate to 'Dashboard'
- copy the 'App Secret' to the clipboard
- execute
heroku config:set MESSENGER_APP_SECRET=<app secret> - use a randomly generated string as 'Verify Token', e.g.
retgdkfjsjklsklj34qdfs - execute
heroku config:set MESSENGER_VERIFY_TOKEN=<verify token> - execute
git push heroku master - navigate back to 'Messenger'
- Section 'Webhooks': Click the 'Setup Webhooks' button
- enter the Callback URL:
https://<heroku app name>.herokuapp.com/callback, e.g.https://messenger4j-heroku-app.herokuapp.com/callback - enter the generated Verify Token, e.g.
retgdkfjsjklsklj34qdfs - select the following Subscription Fields:
messages,messaging_postbacks,messaging_optins,message_deliveries,message_reads,messaging_account_linking,message_echoes - click the 'Verify and Save' button
- Section 'Webhooks': Select your created FB Page to subscribe your webhook to the page events, e.g.
Messenger4j Demo - click the 'Subscribe' button
- open
https://www.messenger.com - search for your Chatbot using the name of your created FB Page, e.g.
Messenger4j Demo - send a message, e.g.
Hello Chatbot,receipt,gif,generic
For more information on how to deploy Spring Boot Apps to Heroku please refer to the Spring Boot Heroku Guide.
This project is licensed under the terms of the MIT license.