Kik Python Bot Example
An example bot implemented in Python.
It's designed to greet the user, send a suggested response and replies to them with their profile picture.
Remember to replace the BOT_USERNAME_HERE, BOT_API_KEY_HERE and WEBHOOK_HERE fields with your own.
See https://github.com/kikinteractive/kik-python for Kik's Python SDK documentation.
#Table Of Contents
- Kik Python Bot Example
- Table of Contents
- Setting up
- Launch Your Bot
- How Bots Work
- Talking to the Bot
- Contributing
- License
Setting Up
Getting ready
Create Your Bot
Go over to dev.kik.com.
...and in Kik, pull down on your conversations list to scan the code.
(the above scan code is only an example, you must go to the link above for a valid scan code)
Pulling down will allow Kik to scan the code and introduce you to Botsworth, the bot maker bot. Follow the prompts to configure your bot.
Botsworth will ask you to give your bot a name which, is the first step. Choose wisely! Your bot should be cleverly and descriptively named - it should provide relatively clear indication as to the function of your bot. Hint: Avoid numbers and special characters in your bot's name.
Once you've chosen your bot's name, Botsworth will ask you to confirm, and will then log you into the Kik Bot Dashboard. You will be prompted to agree to the Kik API Terms of Use.
Next step: Setting up your development environment!
Setting up Python
Make sure you're running at least Python 2.7 or Python 3. We'll be using Python 2.7 today on Linux / MacOS X using virtualenv
Get the sample bot
Clone this repository:
$ git clone https://github.com/kikinteractive/kik-bot-python-example.git
Cloning into 'kik-bot-python-example'...
remote: Counting objects: 88, done.
remote: Total 88 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 88
Receiving objects: 100% (88/88), 18.40 KiB | 0 bytes/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (30/30), done.The example bot is developed as one file (very simply) using Flask. cd to the directory that was created when the repository was cloned.
$ cd kik-bot-python-exampleSetup your Virtualenv environment.
Virtualenv is a popular tool to create isolated Python environments. It is used by many python developers to create an environment that has its own installation directories, that does not share libraries with other environments.
$ virtualenv env
New python executable in ./kik-bot-python-example-internal/env/bin/python2.7
Also creating executable in ./kik-bot-python-example-internal/env/bin/python
Installing setuptools, pip, wheel...done.
$ source env/bin/activateInstall dependencies
Install the python dependencies:
(env) $ pip install -r requirements.dev.txt
ollecting flake8==2.5.4 (from -r requirements.dev.txt (line 1))
Using cached flake8-2.5.4-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Collecting mock==2.0.0 (from -r requirements.dev.txt (line 2))
Using cached mock-2.0.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Collecting kik==1.2.0 (from -r requirements.dev.txt (line 3))
Collecting Flask==0.11 (from -r requirements.dev.txt (line 4))
Using cached Flask-0.11-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Collecting pyyaml (from -r requirements.dev.txt (line 5))
Collecting pep8 (from -r requirements.dev.txt (line 6))
Using cached pep8-1.7.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Collecting nose (from -r requirements.dev.txt (line 7))
Using cached nose-1.3.7-py2-none-any.whl
Collecting nose-cov (from -r requirements.dev.txt (line 8))
Collecting mccabe<0.5,>=0.2.1 (from flake8==2.5.4->-r requirements.dev.txt (line 1))
Using cached mccabe-0.4.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Collecting pyflakes<1.1,>=0.8.1 (from flake8==2.5.4->-r requirements.dev.txt (line 1))
Using cached pyflakes-1.0.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Collecting funcsigs>=1; python_version < "3.3" (from mock==2.0.0->-r requirements.dev.txt (line 2))
Using cached funcsigs-1.0.2-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Collecting pbr>=0.11 (from mock==2.0.0->-r requirements.dev.txt (line 2))
Using cached pbr-1.10.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Collecting six>=1.9 (from mock==2.0.0->-r requirements.dev.txt (line 2))
Using cached six-1.10.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Collecting requests>=2.3.0 (from kik==1.2.0->-r requirements.dev.txt (line 3))
Using cached requests-2.12.4-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Collecting click>=2.0 (from Flask==0.11->-r requirements.dev.txt (line 4))
Using cached click-6.7-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Collecting Werkzeug>=0.7 (from Flask==0.11->-r requirements.dev.txt (line 4))
Using cached Werkzeug-0.11.15-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Collecting Jinja2>=2.4 (from Flask==0.11->-r requirements.dev.txt (line 4))
Using cached Jinja2-2.9.4-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Collecting itsdangerous>=0.21 (from Flask==0.11->-r requirements.dev.txt (line 4))
Collecting cov-core>=1.6 (from nose-cov->-r requirements.dev.txt (line 8))
Collecting MarkupSafe>=0.23 (from Jinja2>=2.4->Flask==0.11->-r requirements.dev.txt (line 4))
Collecting coverage>=3.6 (from cov-core>=1.6->nose-cov->-r requirements.dev.txt (line 8))
Using cached coverage-4.3.1-cp27-cp27m-macosx_10_10_x86_64.whl
Installing collected packages: pep8, mccabe, pyflakes, flake8, funcsigs, pbr, six, mock, requests, kik, click, Werkzeug, MarkupSafe, Jinja2, itsdangerous, Flask, pyyaml, nose, coverage, cov-core, nose-cov
Successfully installed Flask-0.11 Jinja2-2.9.4 MarkupSafe-0.23 Werkzeug-0.11.15 click-6.7 cov-core-1.15.0 coverage-4.3.1 flake8-2.5.4 funcsigs-1.0.2 itsdangerous-0.24 kik-1.2.0 mccabe-0.4.0 mock-2.0.0 nose-1.3.7 nose-cov-1.6 pbr-1.10.0 pep8-1.7.0 pyflakes-1.0.0 pyyaml-3.12 requests-2.12.4 six-1.10.0```Validate the installation
Validate the installation by running the unit tests. It should produce no errors.
(env) $ nosetests
...............
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 15 tests in 0.176s
OK
How Bots Work
Kik bots talk to the Kik infrastructure via HTTP requests: When sending a message, you send a request to us, and for messages to be received by your bot, Kik will make requests to your endpoint. In other words, Kik must be able to call your URL on your web server.
Configuring Your Server
For our bot to work, we need to have an address that's accessible from the internet. Many production Kik bots run in cloud based services such as Heroku, Google App Engine or Amazon Web Services - or in their own data center infrastructure.
However, for development purposes you can use ngrok to provide access to your bot running in your local network. Ngrok is easy to setup and use, and has excellent documentation.
Ngrok is a handy tool and service that allows you tunnel requests from the wide open Internet to your local machine when it's behind a NAT or firewall. It's commonly used to develop web services and webhooks.
If you're using ngrok, launch it now in a new terminal window:
$ ngrok http 8080
When it launches, you will see a screen similar to the following:
ngrok by @inconshreveable (Ctrl+C to quit)
Session Status online
Account A Bot Developer (Plan: Free)
Version 2.1.18
Region United States (us)
Web Interface http://127.0.0.1:4040
Forwarding http://ABCDEFG123.ngrok.io -> localhost:8080
Forwarding https://ABCDEFG123.ngrok.io -> localhost:8080
Connections ttl opn rt1 rt5 p50 p90
0 0 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Note the "Forwarding" address (https://ABCDEFG123.ngrok.io), as this will become part of your 'webhook' address.
Configuring Your Bot
To get the bot running, you're going to need your bot's username, and the API key. This is all available from dev.kik.com. It will be similar to the following screenshot:
Here you can set the display name and "profile picture" for your bot. You'll need to copy/paste your API key into the bot's source code.
Change:
kik = KikApi('BOT_USERNAME_HERE', 'BOT_API_KEY_HERE')so that your bot's username and your API key are passed to Kik API's constructor. For example, if we named our bot ademobot, and according the bot configuration panel our API key is
5a888dcb-4c6e-1973-b15t-308e1854f0ba, then we would change the above line to:
kik = KikApi('ademobot', '5a888dcb-4c6e-1973-b15t-308e1854f0ba')Next, we'll need to set the webhook to the URL of your bot's "incoming messages" route on your web server. This is where Kik will send all the messages that users send to your bot. In the example code, the route for incoming messages is /incoming
Locate the following line in bot.py:
kik.set_configuration(Configuration(webhook='WEBHOOK_HERE'))Kik will send messages to this path upon receipt. So, if your web address is https://www.example.com then you'll set your webhook to https://www.example.com/incoming, as shown below.
kik.set_configuration(Configuration(webhook='https://www.example.com/incoming'))If you're using ngrok as shown above, you would set the webhook as follows:
kik.set_configuration(Configuration(webhook='https://ABCDEFG123.ngrok.io/incoming'))Launch Your Bot
Start the bot by running the file as shown below:
$ python ./bot.py
* Running on http://127.0.0.1:8080/ (Press CTRL+C to quit)
* Restarting with stat
* Debugger is active!
* Debugger pin code: 300-736-125##Talking to the bot
With your bot up and running, you'll be able to chat with it in Kik. It should already appear in your message list. Select it to start chatting:
New users can click on the magnifying glass in their messages list to search for your bot. Once found, they can click on "Start Chatting" to subscribe to your bot and start interacting!
Contributing
If you're looking to contribute to this repository, check out the [Contributing Guide] (https://github.com/kikinteractive/kik-python-bot-example/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md).
This project adheres to the [Contributor Covenant Code of Conduct] (https://github.com/kikinteractive/kik-python-bot-example/blob/master/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md). By participating, you are expected to uphold this code. Please report unacceptable behavior to [email protected].
License
This bot is released under the terms of the Apache 2.0 license.
(c) 2016 Kik Interactive Inc.
Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at
http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing,
software distributed under the License is distributed on an
"AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND,
either express or implied. See the License for the specific
language governing permissions and limitations under the License.
See LICENSE.md for more information.