Interactive bots API

This page documents functions available to the bot, and the structure of the bot's config file.

With this API, you can

intercept, view, and process messages sent by users on Zulip.
send out new messages as replies to the processed messages.

With this API, you cannot

modify an intercepted message (you have to send a new message).
send messages on behalf of or impersonate other users.
intercept direct messages (except for direct messages with the bot as an explicit recipient).

usage

usage(self)

is called to retrieve information about the bot.

Arguments

self - the instance the method is called on.

Return values

A string describing the bot's functionality

Example implementation

def usage(self):
    return '''
        This plugin will allow users to flag messages
        as being follow-up items.  Users should preface
        messages with "@followup".
        Before running this, make sure to create a channel
        called "followup" that your API user can send to.
        '''

handle_message

handle_message(self, message, bot_handler)

handles user message.

Arguments

self - the instance the method is called on.
message - a dictionary describing a Zulip message
bot_handler - used to interact with the server, e.g., to send a message

Return values

None.

Example implementation

  def handle_message(self, message, bot_handler):
     original_content = message['content']
     original_sender = message['sender_email']
     new_content = original_content.replace('@followup',
                                            'from %s:' % (original_sender,))

     bot_handler.send_message(dict(
         type='stream',
         to='followup',
         subject=message['sender_email'],
         content=new_content,
     ))

bot_handler.send_message

bot_handler.send_message(message)

will send a message as the bot user. Generally, this is less convenient than send_reply, but it offers additional flexibility about where the message is sent to.

Arguments

message - a dictionary describing the message to be sent by the bot

Example implementation

bot_handler.send_message(dict(
    type='stream', # can be 'stream' or 'private'
    to=channel_name, # either the channel name or user's email
    subject=subject, # message subject
    content=message, # content of the sent message
))

bot_handler.send_reply

bot_handler.send_reply(message, response)

will reply to the triggering message to the same place the original message was sent to, with the content of the reply being response.

Arguments

message - Dictionary containing information on message to respond to (provided by handle_message).
response - Response message from the bot (string).

bot_handler.update_message

bot_handler.update_message(message)

will edit the content of a previously sent message.

Arguments

message - dictionary defining what message to edit and the new content

Example

From zulip_bots/bots/incrementor/incrementor.py:

bot_handler.update_message(dict(
    message_id=self.message_id, # id of message to be updated
    content=str(self.number), # string with which to update message with
))

bot_handler.storage

A common problem when writing an interactive bot is that you want to be able to store a bit of persistent state for the bot (e.g., for an RSVP bot, the RSVPs). For a sufficiently complex bot, you want need your own database, but for simpler bots, we offer a convenient way for bot code to persistently store data.

The interface for doing this is bot_handler.storage.

The data is stored in the Zulip Server's database. Each bot user has an independent storage quota available to it.

Performance considerations

You can use bot_handler.storage in one of two ways:

Direct access: You can use bot_handler.storage directly, which will result in a round-trip to the server for each get, put, and contains call.
Context manager: Alternatively, you can use the use_storage context manager to minimize the number of round-trips to the server. We recommend writing bots with the context manager such that they automatically fetch data at the start of handle_message and submit the state to the server at the end.

Context manager use_storage

use_storage(storage: BotStorage, keys: List[str])

The context manager fetches the data for the specified keys and stores them in a CachedStorage object with a bot_handler.storage.get call for each key, at the start. This object will not communicate with the server until manually calling flush or getting some values that are not previously fetched. After the context manager block is exited, it will automatically flush any changes made to the CachedStorage object to the server.

Arguments

storage - a BotStorage object, i.e., bot_handler.storage
keys - a list of keys to fetch

Example

with use_storage(bot_handler.storage, ["foo", "bar"]) as cache:
    print(cache.get("foo"))  # print the value of "foo"
    cache.put("foo", "new value")  # update the value of "foo"
# changes are automatically flushed to the server on exiting the block

bot_handler.storage methods

When using the use_storage context manager, the bot_handler.storage methods on the yielded object will only operate on a cached version of the storage.

bot_handler.storage.put

bot_handler.storage.put(key, value)

will store the value value in the entry key.

Arguments

key - a UTF-8 string
value - a UTF-8 string

Example

bot_handler.storage.put("foo", "bar")  # set entry "foo" to "bar"

bot_handler.storage.get

bot_handler.storage.get(key)

will retrieve the value for the entry key.

Arguments

key - a UTF-8 string

Example

bot_handler.storage.put("foo", "bar")
print(bot_handler.storage.get("foo"))  # print "bar"

bot_handler.storage.contains

bot_handler.storage.contains(key)

will check if the entry key exists.

Note that this will only check the cache, so it would return False if no previous call to bot_handler.storage.get() or bot_handler.storage.put() was made for key, since the bot was restarted.

Arguments

key - a UTF-8 string

Example

bot_handler.storage.contains("foo")  # False
bot_handler.storage.put("foo", "bar")
bot_handler.storage.contains("foo")  # True

bot_handler.storage marshaling

By default, bot_handler.storage accepts any object for keys and values, as long as it is JSON-able. Internally, the object then gets converted to an UTF-8 string. You can specify custom data marshaling by setting the functions bot_handler.storage.marshal and bot_handler.storage.demarshal. These functions parse your data on every call to put and get, respectively.

Flushing cached data to the server

When using the use_storage context manager, you can manually flush changes made to the cache to the server, using the below methods.

cache.flush

cache.flush()

will flush all changes to the cache to the server.

Example

with use_storage(bot_handler.storage, ["foo", "bar"]) as cache:
    cache.put("foo", "foo_value")  # update the value of "foo"
    cache.put("bar", "bar_value")  # update the value of "bar"
    cache.flush()  # manually flush both the changes to the server

cache.flush_one

cache.flush_one(key)

will flush the changes for the specified key to the server.

Arguments

key - a UTF-8 string

Example

with use_storage(bot_handler.storage, ["foo", "bar"]) as cache:
    cache.put("foo", "baz")  # update the value of "foo"
    cache.put("bar", "bar_value")  # update the value of "bar"
    cache.flush_one("foo")  # flush the changes to "foo" to the server

Configuration file

 [api]
 key=<api-key>
 email=<email>
 site=<dev-url>

key - the API key you created for the bot; this is how Zulip knows the request is from an authorized user.
email - the email address of the bot, e.g., some-bot@zulip.com
site - your development environment URL; if you are working on a development environment hosted on your computer, use localhost:9991

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