E-shop whatsapp bot template

• A some-what bare template for whatsapp chatbot..originally made using twilio sandbox
• original proposal was tailored towards an electronic startup that sells electronic components
• can be extended or changed to suit any business type with minor or major tweaks

Demos

• this is not an AI-ML bot, an example of an AI bot with ML can be found here, ZIMSEC bot

• This example bot On development app, has many sides, here i show 2, how it works for both a client and the moderator

• ..seperately with no problem 😎

• Click this link to whatsapp bot. After that you can type hie or hello or start.

• Consumer / client side

• Moderator side

Note

• Well, as much as i try to give out my thoughts to the public, EXCEPTION HANDLING is to be done by the interested personnel in this project

Technologies

• This whatsapp bot makes use of twilio sandbox for prototyping
• Needs twilio credentials, login to your twilio console and replace yr keys in credentials.py
• Can host on heroku free tier and choose automatic deployment from your github master branch
• bulksms service can be used depending on use case, one such service is bulksmszw and ther is a library for that at bulksms zw api library
• or if its hot-recharge services like TechZim airtime bot, can integrate it using the hot-recharge zw api library *still testing, raise issues and star for updates.

Structure

• whether this is a good design structure | not, this worked for me - you can change depending on your project or business model
• in src folder, it handles all the bot functionalities subdivided into different modules to aid in upgrading the bot later
• most bot utilities are implemented inside utils.py
• statistics are in a seperate folder e.g stats
• commands and help texts are in their seperate e.g folder

How to run

• clone or fork this repo!
• for cloud serving, you can use heroku free account and choose automatic deploy from your bot github repository
• needs a twilio account and twilio tokens and sandbox ready, check the twilio website
• for local testing, fire up your flask server and run ngrok (needs Ngrok installed)
• you can google on the internet how to do so, there is a tutorial about that
• run some tests, and show off to friends, family and clients 😉

tip

• after successful deployment to heroku, use your free heroku url to add to twilio console on callback webhook

• as https://your-heroku-url/whatsapp and let magic rain, your bot is automatically now linked between the 2 and is now online 24/7

• for local testing with ngrok, use https://your-temporary-ngrok-https-url/whatsapp on the twilio console. Dont use the http url

• Make bots like what the banks have, like what that whatsapp bot you admired works, be creative 👨‍🎨

Appericiation

• If you like this sort of bot template helpful give it a STAR 🌟 or FORK 😃 | FOLLOW. It motivates..I might bring an extra open source free project as a head-start next that you might find helpful too 😉