Botkit Middleware for Wit.ai

Unleash the power of Wit.ai's Natural Language Processing to your Botkit bot with this middleware. All incoming text messages (by default it filters payload derived from Facebook Messenger buttons like Quick Replies and Postbacks) will go through Wit.ai's API to extract useful entities that will be added to the message object so they can be used in the controller.

This Botkit Middleware is maintained up-to-date with both Wit.ai and Botkit latest versions and it works with all Botkit's supported messaging platforms.

Installation

In order to utilize wit.ai's service you will need to create an account at Wit.ai. Grab the access token at Settings as shown below:

Next you will need to add botkit-witai as a dependency to your Botkit bot:

npm install --save botkit-witai

Enable the middleware with the following options:

• accessToken - (required) Token to use Wit.ai API
• minConfidence - (optional) Minimum Wit.ai's entities confidence value to be considered. Valid value range is from 0.1 to 1. 0.5 is the default.
• logLevel - (optional) Log level for the middleware. Valid values are: 'debug', 'info', 'warning', 'error'.

Example:

var wit = require('botkit-witai')({
    accessToken: <my_witai_token>,
    minConfidence: 0.6,
    logLevel: 'debug'
});

controller.middleware.receive.use(wit.receive);

Usage

You will receive in the callback of the controller.hears the Wit.ai's entities defined in your panel as shown below that match the message received:

Example:

controller.hears(['spa'], 'message_received', wit.hears, function (bot, message) {
      console.log("Wit.ai detected entities", message.entities);
      //Example message: "I want a spa treatment"
      //    {
      //      "spa": [
      //        {
      //          "confidence": 1,
      //          "type": "value",
      //          "value": "spa"
      //        }
      //      ]
      //    }
      
      //Your code here
});

##Roadmap

• Wit.ai's conversation actions linked to Botkit's conversation steps.
• Functional testing coverage.

##Author Rafael Casuso

Github: @RafaelCasuso

Twitter: @Rafael_Casuso