Installation¶
The easiest way to get started is using our
bots
command line tool.Note
We strongly recommend using a virtual environment to avoid package conflicts.
virtualenv -p python3 bot_env/ && source bot_env/bin/activate
First, install Botshot and dependencies from PyPI.
pip3 install botshot
Now go ahead and run:
bots init my_bot
This will bootstrap a chatbot with default configuration under
my_bot/
.Running the chatbot¶
First, cd to the chatbot directory you just created.
cd my_bot
You can now run the chatbot with
bots start my_bot
.The web chat interface should now be running at http://localhost:8000/ .
Go ahead and say something to your chatbot!
Running from IDE (optional)¶
In case you’re using an IDE such as PyCharm for development, it might be more convenient to run the chatbot from within it, to make use of the debugger.
You will need to manually start these three components:
- Django server
Under Edit configurations > Add configuration > Django server
- Celery tasks
- Under Edit configurations > Add configuration > PythonScript path: path to celery - bot_env/bin/celeryWorking directory: chatbot root
- Redis database
- You can either run
redis-server
from the terminal or with an init script, as you would any other database.If you’re on Ubuntu and have installed redis withapt install redis
, it should already be running.You can connect to your database usingredis-cli
.