article by Frank Nimphius, September 2018
A webhook is a programming interfaces implemented by a system on the web for other programs subscribe and to receive automated notification in case anything of interest happens. One such system is chatbot. Users "register" for a chatbot through a messenger client and by sending messages to the bot. The bot then resolves the request, processes it and returns a response that the original sender receives. Webhook clients are like adapters that dispatch and manage conversation between a user and a remote system.
In Oracle Intelligent Bots, channels allow bot designers to expose the bot functionality to a specific type messenger client. Underneath channels are webhooks. Channels, like Facebook, Web, iOS, Android and more that are in development, are referred to as "native channels" Native channels are webhook implementations that exist and that you, as the bot designer, don't have to code for.
For integrating messengers that Oracle Intelligent Bots doesn't have a native channel for, you use the generic Webhook channel. The Webhook channel in Oracle Intelligent Bots opens up the Oracle bots platform for any messengers client. All you need to do is to write the webhook implementation.
In this article, I explain the basic steps of creating a webhook client using the Oracle Bots Node.js SDK available on GitHub and npmjs. In future articles I will use this article as a starting point for explaining how to integrate Oracle Intelligent Bots with Messenger services like Alexa and Google Hangouts.
Update note:
Oracle Intelligent Bots has been rebranded Oracle Digital Assistant to better describe its capabilities beyond a standard chatbot. To learn more, visit cloud.oracle.com/digital-assistant
READ FULL ARTICLE (PDF)
Sample Sources
Note: You need to run the NPM install commands explained in the article against the sample folder. Otherwise you will miss the Oracle Node SDK and dependent Node Modules
Related Content
TechExchange Quick-Tip: How-to Write And Read User Profile Information Using the Web Client-SDK
