Chatengine is a web application to quickly prototype and test chats with. You can create many types of conversations by editing a JSON-like file with the conversation definition and host the resulting prototype as a standard mobile website.
Host the files locally with the command: python -m SimpleHTTPServer and go to http://localhost:8000/ for a sample conversation.
We use a fake JSON file as our conversation. You can find and edit this file in: js/conversation.js
The file contains a conversation object with nodes indexed by a string (in our case numbers). A node can contain a bunch of stuff:
- "statement" (required) what our bot says. This can be a string, a array of strings or a function (with context) that returns an array of strings.
- "options" an array of options the user can choose. Each option is rendered as a button that the user can select (which they then also say as a response) and a "consequence" which is the next node we move to after.
- "input" will replace options and give the user an input field. What the user types is stored in the context under "name" and we then move to consequence.
- "sideeffect" a Javascript function that is executed at the start of a node. We use this mostly to set variables in the context but it could do anything.
Built with Zurb Foundation.
For local development we recommend using CodeKit.
The chat bubbles and animated ellipsis were created with Sketch. The source files can be found in the 'sketch' directory. Export the ellipsis using the 'Generate-GIF' plugin with 'loop 200 ms' as the settings.