Guide on creating an open chat bot

Introduction

Open Chat is a decentralized messaging platform built on the Internet Computer blockchain. Open Chat bots allow developers to add automated functionality and interactive features to chats and communities.

There are two types of bots in Open Chat:

• Offchain bots: Run as external services that connect to Open Chat
• Onchain bots: Run directly on the Internet Computer as canisters

This guide will walk you through setting up both types of bots locally.

• Check out the official docs and sdk on open chat bots here

• Once you have an understanding of the bots. You can now proceed to run open chat locally which is the first step

Running open chat locally:

N/B: Ensure you're using node >= 20.0.0 and dfx >= dfx 0.25.1-beta.0

1. Clone the main open chat repo:

git clone https://github.com/open-chat-labs/open-chat 

cd open-chat

2. Start dfx and install necessary canisters (Open chat and NNS):

dfx start --clean --background 

./scripts/deploy-local.sh # ensure you run this script in a new terminal, different from the one you used to run dfx start

3. Once the script executes succesfully, run the frontend:

cd frontend 

npm run dev 

You can now open the frontend in your browser by navigating to http://localhost:5001

Section 1: Creating an offchain bot:

Now the next step is to check out the open chat bots repository:

1. Clone the open chat bot repository:

git clone https://github.com/open-chat-labs/open-chat-bots
cd open-chat-bots

2. Move into any of the examples that are there. We'll run the dice example:

cd rs/offchain/examples/dice/

3. Create a new identity that you'll use for the bot

dfx identity new testbot_identity --storage-mode=plaintext  # we're using plaintext mode to be able to see the seed phrase 

4. Export the identity to a .pem file:

dfx identity export testbot_identity

4. Get identity of the bot from the generated identity:

dfx --identity testbot_identity identity get-principal

5. Get your open chat public key from the locally running open chat: Go to profile settings in the advanced section and click on the bot client config button, you will see your Open Chat Public Key:

Now create a .env file in the dice examples directory & add the config. This is how your .env file should look like:

PEM_FILE="/Users/la/open-chat-hackathon/open-chat-bots/rs/offchain/examples/dice/testbot_identity.pem"
OC_PUBLIC_KEY="-----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----\nMFkwEwYHKoZIzj0CAQYIKoZIzj0DAQcDQgAEqFYOW8Y0i+j1JWf1taO34MoDXSkQ\n1PgtMPIYogRQjSFj3NCfc6ZvlPNj8XHv8fPVvm42AOKqWDJ1aNP1e/ggVQ==\n-----END PUBLIC KEY-----\n"
PORT=4000
IC_URL="http://127.0.0.1:8080" # For those running dfx on port 8080 

You can now run the dice bot in the open chat bots directory:

cargo run -- --pem-file /Users/la/open-chat-hackathon/open-chat-bots/rs/offchain/examples/dice/testbot_identity.pem

Once your bot is running, you can go back to the locally running open chat app and start the process of adding your bot

Registering the bot on open chat locally:

1. Create a new group on your local open chat:

Enter the group name and just click next untill you reach the Create Group button

Once you've created the group, you can now start the open chat bot registration:

Write /register_bot command to register a bot

Input the details of the bot

You can print the principal id of the bot by running the command:

dfx --identity testbot_identity identity get-principal

For the Bot endpoint you'll choose the endpoint of your bot as from the dice bot main.rs file:

let listener = tokio::net::TcpListener::bind("127.0.0.1:3000") // It's here 
        .await
        .unwrap();

Click on the reload button "red in color" and you will see the Bot description immediately populated as Use this bot to roll dice or toss coins and the commands coin & run outputted

Now click on register and your bot will be registered within open chat, but not in any groups or communities

Since you're the owner of the group on your locally running open chat, you can add the bot by clicking on members and then Add Bots. You will then see an install bot popup

When someone clicks on the enter command - command and arguments are sent to the bot gateway, signed, and then Open Chat sends JWT through the bot, it reads the JWT, processes the command and posts its response to open chat

Section 2: Creating an onchain bot:

Ensure you have set up open chat locally as per the instructions in the Go to Running Open Chat Locally section.

1. Move into the onchain bots directory in the open-chat-bots folder:

cd rs/canister/examples/reminder

2. Create the reminder bot canister:

dfx canister create reminder_bot --no-wallet

3. Now build the canister, and hard code the canister id:

dfx build --check

4. When installing the reminder bot, it will take a single argument, which is the OC public key:

dfx canister call user_index public_key '(record { })' # run this command inside the open-chat directory

# the command above will output the OC public key, copy it and paste it into the command below: 
dfx canister install reminder_bot --mode reinstall --argument '(variant { Init = record { oc_public_key = "<OC_PUBLIC_KEY>" } })' # run this command inside the open-chat-bots directory (in the reminder example)

5. Now you can view the bot definition by accesiing it from the endpoint:

http://<canister-id>.raw.localhost:8080

# You'll replace the <canister-id> with the canister id that was outputted when you run the command ``dfx canister create reminder_bot --no-wallet``

This is what you'll see when you open the URL in your browser:

Now the next step will be registering the bot in Open Chat locally.

Type /register_bot in the chat and the popup for registering the bot will appear.

The principal of the bot is the canister id that was outputted when you ran the command dfx canister create reminder_bot --no-wallet

Then the endpoint is the endpoint of the bot that you can see in the browser when you open the URL http://<canister-id>.raw.localhost:8080

And basically that's it, you've registered your bot on open chat locally.