###Meetup Info
Please download the lastest STABLE version of Node.js here
Node.js will allow us to use the Javascript programming language for our bots.
Sublime is the text editor we will use to edit our code and write bots.
After you have installed Sublime Text, drag it to your dock. This will help you easily open your bot for editing.
If you have not completed your registration for Rise of the Bots, please do so now at the following link: http://join.riseofthebots.net.
You will receive a confirmation email shortly to join Rise of the Bots on Slack.
We've prepared this document to serve as a short walkthrough that will have you up and running by the end of it. In order to create a chatbot we'll be depending on a few pieces of existing technology. This will allow us to build our bot with greatly improved speed and ease collaboration efforts so that everyone can get involved. All of our work will utilize our demo-bot code base, so let's start there.
Please download the lastest release here.
We created a bot that you can program with natural language commands! Inside are instructions and examples of the functionality you will find in your bot. In addition to our tools, your bot will use Botkit to connect to Slack.
Press command-spacebar to open Spotlight, type "terminal", and press enter. Alternatively, open a finder window and navigate to Applications > Utilities. There you'll find Terminal.app which we'll use to enter commands.
In your terminal window, type the following, ignoring the dollar sign:
$ cd
In your finder, navigate to your Downloads directory and drag the demo-bot-x.x.x folder into your terminal window.
Press enter.
Then we'll complete the installation by typing the following command, also in terminal:
$ npm install
If you see a dialogue box asking about installing the Xcode CLI tools, click yes.
Next we want to connect your bot to Slack! As a first step, register your bot. Make sure you've logged into Rise of the Bots then visit the custom integrations page at https://slack.com/apps/manage/custom-integrations. Click "Build your own" in the top right navigation, then "Make a Custom Integration", and finally "Bots". Give your bot a username and click "Add Bot integration". On the following screen you'll see a field called "API Token". Copy the token, and keep it handy for the next step.
Back in the finder, drag the demo-bot-x.x.x folder onto Sublime Text in your dock.
In the left column, control-click on the root directory of this project and create a new file. Save the file and name it ".env". The file name should include the dot prefix. Click "yes" if you get a dialogue box about filenames beginning with a period. In the file, type "token=" and paste your slack token from Step 6 so that the contents of the file looks like this:
token=xoxb-fffffffffff-PfN6HCc7L6kVHqTU3eTS1Csc
You officially have a capable chat bot!!! Connect the bot to slack by running:
$ npm start
After the bot has loaded and the output has stopped you should notice that your bot is online and available inside your Slack team. There are endless possibilities, what will you come up with?