Create a Chatbot for Facebook Messenger with Laravel and PHP

Name: Create a Chatbot for Facebook Messenger with Laravel and PHP
Rating: 4.2 (66 reviews)

Step by step to your first custom chatbot with PHP

Created byJan König

Last updated 2/2017

English

What you'll learn

Develop your own keyword-based chatbots for Facebook Messenger
Use Laravel to your advantage to create chatbots quickly
Use PHP to communicate with the Twitter REST API

Course content

4 sections • 25 lectures • 1h 40m total length

Introduction and Course Landscape3:08
Let's get started! In this lecture, you will learn more about the course content, and how we're going to build a chatbot for Facebook Messenger step by step.
Introduction to Laravel2:01
We are going to use Laravel, a great framework for PHP, to create our chatbot. In this lecture, you will briefly learn what Laravel is about and how to install it.
Introduction to Chatbots3:07
Chatbots are hyped! But why, and what can they do? In this lecture, you will learn some basics about chatbots and why they're so interesting at the moment.
Summary0:43
Enough with the theory! After this lecture, we're getting our hands dirty. Let's build a bot together.

Introduction0:40
In this section, we're going to build our first chatbot for Facebook Messenger. It will just respond with a simple "Hello World" after a conversation is initiated by a user. But it's something!
Create a new Laravel project2:47
To get started, we first need to create a new Laravel project on your computer. Make sure that you have installed Laravel and Composer to be able to complete this task.
Make your local server accessible with ngrok4:38
ngrok is a very helpful tool to make your local files accessible to the outside. We will use this later to communicate with the Facebook API without having to upload our files to a server all the time.
Use the Messenger API Package for PHP3:28
To communicate with the Facebook Messenger API, we're going to use a PHP package by Pimax. In this lecture, you will learn how to use this package in Laravel.
Create a Facebook app4:40
In order to communicate with the Facebook API, we first need to create a Facebook page and app. Let's do this in this lecture.
Verify a webhook with the Facebook API10:33
In this lecture, you will learn how to verify the webhook with the Facebook Messenger API. We will create a MessengerController in our Laravel project and write the necessary code to pass the verification.
Receive messages from Facebook users6:22
Before we send out our first message to a user, we first need to be able to receive messages via the Facebook Messenger API. This is necessary because the first interaction between a user and a page always needs to be initiated by the user. In this lecture, we're creating a POST webhook and looking at incoming messages.
Send your first message: Hello World!3:48
Finally! In this lecture, we're sending out our first message "Hello World" to a user.
Summary0:57
The groundwork is done, now we can proceed to the fun part. In the next section, we are going to create the core functionality of the bot: Communicating with the Twitter API.
Bonus: Create a parrot bot2:14
A little fun exercise: What if we don't want our bot to respond with "Hello World," but rather just copy the user's messages? Let's try it out!

Introduction0:48
In this section, you will learn how to respond to keywords, communicate with the Twitter Trends API, and return trends for any location the user wants.
Respond to simple keywords9:27
In this lecture, we're making our bot a lot better. Let's bury the "parrot bot" and start making it able to respond to (extendable) commands. After this lecture, you will have a blueprint for a simple, keyword-based chatbot.
Get real-time data from Twitter9:30
To be able to build the core functionality of the bot, we first need to be able to communicate with the Twitter API. In this lecture, you will learn how to install a Twitter API package for Laravel to do exactly that.
Return Twitter trends for Berlin4:24
Almost there! Let's start with Berlin. In this lecture, you will learn how to return currently trending Twitter topics for Berlin in a simple text message.
Return Twitter trends for any location10:37
Finally! In this lecture you will learn how to return trending topics for any location, not only Berlin. This is a great example for a simple keyword and rules-based chatbot.
A simple fix for better readability2:18
In this lecture, you will learn how to get the name of a location with the right use of capital and small letters.
Summary1:08
Congratulations! You just built your first prototype of a keyword-base chatbot!

Introduction0:50
In this lecture, you will learn more about the necessary steps to publish your chatbot.
Upload your project to Heroku8:15
To make our bot publicly available, we need to move away from our localhost + ngrok and upload our code to a server. We will use this by deploying our project to Heroku.
Prepare for the Facebook Messenger review3:10
Facebook has a review process that Messenger bots need to pass, before they are accessible to any Facebook user. In this lecture, you will learn more about the review steps.
Summary1:08
That was it! Any questions? Please let me know in the forum. Happy to help!

Requirements

You should be able to understand and write simple PHP code
You should have a text editor like Sublime Text 2 and a working version of PHP on your computer
You should understand the principles of Model View Controller frameworks like Laravel

Description

At the end of this course, you will be able to create your own keyword based chatbots for Facebook Messenger!

Since Facebook Messenger opened their platform for chatbots, many people believe these conversational bots are among the next big things to change how people interact with technology. But how do you build a chatbot? Welcome to Chatbot Academy.

Together, we will build a chatbot called "Twitter Trending Chatbot" that returns currently trending topics for a location the user wants. We will do this step by step with a PHP framework called Laravel, which makes it very easy to prototype and develop your first bot.

In this hands-on course, you will learn:

How to use Laravel for PHP to create a new chatbot project
How to create a Facebook app and receive messages
How to send messages based on a user's input
How to respond to keywords with real-time data
How to upload and publish your bot

This course is designed for:

Developers and marketers with some experience with PHP
People who have heard of MVC frameworks like Laravel before
People who are excited about learning something new :)

Topics that are not part of this course (yet):

Natural Language Processing (for beginners, keyword based solutions are enough to play with)
Artificial Intelligence (we are going to create a rules based chatbot)
Other platforms like Kik, Telegram, or Slack

Are you ready to build your first bot?

Then sign up now and join Chatbot Academy. It's a lot of fun, we promise :).

Emoji provided free by EmojiOne.

Who this course is for:

This course is for developers and marketers who want to learn how to create simple chatbots

Create a Chatbot for Facebook Messenger with Laravel and PHP

What you'll learn

Explore related topics

Course content

Introduction4 lectures • 9min

Your first bot: "Hello World"10 lectures • 40min

Build your bot with real-time data7 lectures • 38min

Publish your bot4 lectures • 13min

Requirements

Description

Who this course is for: