Chatbot for VKontakte (vk.com)

❗ Since 2/9/16 updates became private.

Live example: vk.com/chatsbot

Features

1. Replies to messages using cleverbot.com answers database.
2. Performs commands.
3. Accepts friend requests automatically.
4. Updates status automatically (prints actual bot state)
5. Easy adding new commands (see Adding commands)
   Parsers (see Adding parsers)
   And middlewares.

Installation

$ git clone git://github.com/olnaz/vkbot.git && cd vkbot && npm install
$ sudo npm install pm2 -g

Setting up

Application

Go to vk.com/apps and create your own "Standalone" application.
Open settings of the app and add new methods from __execute folder (method name = file name without .js)

File start.js

Open the file start.js and specify App ID, Login and Password of bot account.
Also you can specify anti-captcha.com API-key needed for recognizing captcha.

Starting

$ sudo pm2 start start.js --name vkbot
$ sudo pm2 start start.js --name vkbot -- -debug && sudo pm2 logs // for debugging

Process monitoring

$ sudo pm2 monit

PM2 documentation: github.com/Unitech/pm2

After the first start access_token will be saved to ./token.json.

Adding parsers

Parsers are need for processing incoming messages and running certain script depending on the message body.
They are in the app/parsers folder.

Amount of parsers isn't limited, but to the incoming message will be applied the first parser fit for condition.
To force the app to use your parser, you need to put it into app/parsers folder.

Example:

// app/parsers/example.js
'use strict';

module.exports = function (messageObj) {
  return {
    cond: messageObj.message.startsWith('@@@'), 
    fn: callback => {
      return callback({
        message: '@@@ Message to send', 
        forward: messageObj.isMultichat
      });
    }
  }
}

Each parser must export function that takes one argument messageObj and returns object with cond property and fn method.

messageObj:

• _cleverbot (Object): Cleverbot instance.
• _vkapi (Object): VKApi instance.
• attachments (Object): Message attachments. (vk.com/dev/using_longpoll)
• botId (Number)
• chatId (Number): === fromId for tet-a-tet chats
• chatUsers (Object): Data format: {userId: userFirstName}
• fromId (Number): User ID (message owner)
• isMultichat (Boolean): true, if message has come in a multichat
• message (String): Message text
• messageId (Number): Message ID

cond - if true, this parser will be used.
fn - callback-function that will be called if cond === true.

Inside the function fn, you must call callback(Object)-function, when all operations were done.

Object:

• message (String): Message to send
• attachments (String/Array of Strings): Message attachments (optional) vk.com/dev/messages.send
• forward (Boolean): if true, the source message will be forwarded.

Adding commands

All commands are in the app/parsers/commands folder.
Files that name starts with "__" are "private" and can be used only inside the app.

To force the app to use your command, you need to put it into app/parsers/commands folder, add its description in the file app/parsers/config/lang.js, and specify aliases for it (optional) in the file app/config/commands/__aliases.js

Each command .js-file must export function that takes two arguments arg and callback.
Inside the function, you must call callback(Object)-function, when all operations were done. (see Adding parsers)

arg - arguments parser
callback - callback-function (see Adding parsers)

arg object methods:

• firstWord(): returns the first word
• fullText(): returns the full text
• textAndNum(): returns the array [text, number] or [text], if number was not specified
• attachment(type): returns the array [attachment, messageId], or null
• wholeObj(): returns the source messageObj object

Example:

// app/parsers/commands/example.js
'use strict';

module.exports = (arg, callback) => {
  let argText = arg.fullText();
  let VK = arg.wholeObj()._vkapi;
  
  let reply = ~argText.indexOf('example') ? 'Example message' : null;

  return callback({
    message: reply
  });
}

About commands

Commands for personal messages and multichats are different.
You can specify which commands are unique in the file app/parsers/commands/__list.js.