Hubot Tutorial Bot

Steps to recreate this bot

If you have root permissions on your current user account:

npm install -g hubot coffee-script yo generator-hubot
mkdir -p /path/to/hubot
cd /path/to/hubot
yo hubot
# choose "slack" as the adapter

Otherwise:

npm config set prefix ~/.npm
export PATH="$PATH:$HOME/.npm/bin"
npm install hubot coffee-script yo generator-hubot
mkdir -p /path/to/hubot
cd /path/to/hubot
yo hubot
# choose "slack" as the adapter

Install redis (the database that powers hubot):

If you have brew, use this:

brew install redis

Otherwise, use this resource: http://redis.io/topics/quickstart

Start redis:

redis-server

Overview

hubot-tutorial is a chat bot built on the Hubot framework. It was initially generated by generator-hubot, and configured to be deployed on Heroku to get you up and running as quick as possible.

This README is intended to help get you started. Definitely update and improve to talk about your own instance, how to use and deploy, what functionality he has, etc!

Running hubot-tutorial Locally

You can test your hubot by running the following.

You can start hubot-tutorial locally by running:

% bin/hubot

You'll see some start up output about where your scripts come from and a prompt:

[Sun, 04 Dec 2011 18:41:11 GMT] INFO Loading adapter shell
[Sun, 04 Dec 2011 18:41:11 GMT] INFO Loading scripts from /home/tomb/Development/hubot/scripts
[Sun, 04 Dec 2011 18:41:11 GMT] INFO Loading scripts from /home/tomb/Development/hubot/src/scripts
Hubot>

Then you can interact with hubot-tutorial by typing hubot-tutorial help.

hubot-tutorial> hubot-tutorial help

hubot-tutorial> animate me <query> - The same thing as `image me`, except adds a few
convert me <expression> to <units> - Convert expression to given units.
help - Displays all of the help commands that Hubot knows about.
...

Scripting

An example script is included at scripts/example.coffee, so check it out to get started, along with the Scripting Guide.

For many common tasks, there's a good chance someone has already one to do just the thing.

hubot-scripts

There will inevitably be functionality that everyone will want. Instead of writing it yourself, you can check hubot-scripts for existing scripts.

To enable scripts from the hubot-scripts package, add the script name with extension as a double quoted string to the hubot-scripts.json file in this repo.

external-scripts

Hubot is able to load scripts from third-party npm package. Check the package's documentation, but in general it is:

1. Add the packages as dependencies into your package.json
2. npm install to make sure those packages are installed
3. Add the package name to external-scripts.json as a double quoted string

You can review external-scripts.json to see what is included by default.

Persistence

If you are going to use the hubot-redis-brain package (strongly suggested), you will need to add the Redis to Go addon on Heroku which requires a verified account or you can create an account at Redis to Go and manually set the REDISTOGO_URL variable.

% heroku config:add REDISTOGO_URL="..."

If you don't require any persistence feel free to remove the hubot-redis-brain from external-scripts.json and you don't need to worry about redis at all.

Adapters

Adapters are the interface to the service you want your hubot to run on. This can be something like Campfire or IRC. There are a number of third party adapters that the community have contributed. Check Hubot Adapters for the available ones.

If you would like to run a non-Campfire or shell adapter you will need to add the adapter package as a dependency to the package.json file in the dependencies section.

Once you've added the dependency and run npm install to install it you can then run hubot with the adapter.

% bin/hubot -a <adapter>

Where <adapter> is the name of your adapter without the hubot- prefix.

Testing the bot locally:

HUBOT_SLACK_TOKEN=YOUR_TOKEN_HERE ./bin/hubot -a slack

Deployment

This is a modified set of instructions based on the instructions on the Hubot wiki.

• Follow the instructions above to create a hubot locally

• Edit your Procfile; it should look something like this:

    web: bin/hubot --adapter slack
  

• Install heroku toolbelt if you haven't already.

• heroku create my-company-slackbot

• heroku addons:add redistogo:nano

• Activate the Hubot service on your "Team Services" page inside Slack.

• Add the config variables. For example:

    % heroku config:add HUBOT_SLACK_TOKEN=xoxb-1234-5678-91011-00e4dd
    % heroku config:add HEROKU_URL=http://my-company-slackbot.herokuapp.com
  

• Deploy and start the bot:

    % git push heroku master
    % heroku ps:scale web=1
  

• Profit!

Campfire Variables

If you are using the Campfire adapter you will need to set some environment variables. Refer to the documentation for other adapters and the configuraiton of those, links to the adapters can be found on Hubot Adapters.

Create a separate Campfire user for your bot and get their token from the web UI.

% heroku config:add HUBOT_CAMPFIRE_TOKEN="..."

Get the numeric IDs of the rooms you want the bot to join, comma delimited. If you want the bot to connect to https://mysubdomain.campfirenow.com/room/42 and https://mysubdomain.campfirenow.com/room/1024 then you'd add it like this:

% heroku config:add HUBOT_CAMPFIRE_ROOMS="42,1024"

Add the subdomain hubot should connect to. If you web URL looks like http://mysubdomain.campfirenow.com then you'd add it like this:

% heroku config:add HUBOT_CAMPFIRE_ACCOUNT="mysubdomain"

Configuration

This adapter uses the following environment variables:

• HUBOT_SLACK_TOKEN - this is the API token for the Slack user you would like to run Hubot under.

To add or remove your bot from specific channels or private groups, you can use the /kick and /invite slash commands that are built into Slack.

Restart the bot

You may want to get comfortable with heroku logs and heroku restart if you're having issues.