readme-facebook.md

BotMan with Facebook Messenger

Preparation

Note: Facebook Messenger requires a valid URL in order to set up webhooks. If you are using Laravel Valet, you can get an external URL for testing using the valet share command.

This URL needs to validate itself against Facebook. When you create the webhook on the Facebook developer website, you have to choose a unique verify token, which you can check against in your verify controller.

This is what the Facebook verification would look like in a Laravel application. Place it in a controller method. Facebook will try to send it a GET request.

// Facebook verification
if ($request->hub_mode === 'subscribe' && $request->hub_verify_token === 'MY_SECRET_TOKEN') {
    return $request->hub_challenge;
}

To connect BotMan with your Facebook Messenger Bot, you first need to follow the official quick start guide to create your Messenger Bot and retrieve an access token.

Once you have obtained the page access token, place it in your BotMan configuration.

Laravel

For Laravel, the page access token needs to be in your config/services.php file

    'botman' => [
    	'facebook_token' => 'YOUR-FACEBOOK-PAGE-TOKEN-HERE',
    ],

Generic

If you don't use Laravel, you can pass the page access token to the DriverManager class upon initialization.

$botman = new BotMan(
    new Serializer(),
    $request,
    new CustomCache(),
    new DriverManager([
    	'facebook_token' => 'YOUR-FACEBOOK-PAGE-TOKEN-HERE',
    ]), new Curl())
);

And that's it - you can now use BotMan with your Facebook bot!