A Facebook Chat Bot Using Magento 2 Async Processing

Magento 2 Architect

Eugene Tulika @vrann

Use-Case: Store With Hand-Picked Books

Niche Customers With Unusual Requests

Facebook Page

• Facebook is the best way to reach larger and targeted audience• Facebook Page representing the store• Customers don’t want to leave Facebook to shop in store• Customers ask questions in Messenger

Facebook Chat Bots

• When store Manager cannot handle all communications manually• Facebook webhooks for messages received in the chat• Facebook API for responses

Facebook POSTs Messages to the Callback

Callback.php200 OK

Callback POSTs Response to Facebook API

Understanding the Conversation

How to Convert Messages to Magento API Requests

Input Classifier

Search catalog by author

Title, image url, description

Quadrant of Conversation Parsers

Image from https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-way-to-learn-and-write-a-AI-Chat-bot

Wit.AI Retrieval Conversation Setup

Conversation Parsing

• https://github.com/vrann/phpwit

Do you have a book by Proust?

Intent: catalog_searchParameters: Author: ProustInvoke: catalogSearch(context)

Integration With Magento

IN/OUT integration Using Web API

On average, Magento store has integrations with 15 different external systems

Integrations Framework:• API In supported by Web API (CE) and RabbitMQ (EE)• API Out supported by RabbitMQ (EE)

Callback Makes API Request to Magento

Messenger Callback.php

API

Web API Request

Magento POSTs response to Facebook

Web API Service Interface

Magento API Interfaces

• https://github.com/vrann/magebot

Map Service to the Web API Endpoint

What Can Go Wrong?

When customer writes in Messenger:• Blocking request from callback to Magento• Scalability: Magento can be overloaded processing other requests• Availability: Magento API is unreachable at that moment

Messages from customer can be lost!

API IN Using RabbitMQ

Callback Puts Messages to the Queue

• Scripts: https://github.com/vrann/http-rabbitmq-writer

Messenger

API

Callback.php

Magento POSTs response to Facebook

Rabbit MQ

Transformation of Web API to Inbound Calls via RabbitMQ

Map message handler to topic in communication.xml

Map consumer to queue in queue_consumer.xml

Run consumer(s):

Communication & Queue Configurations

We achieved: Non-Blocking request, response to Facebook sent immediately Scalability handled by Queue Availability handled by QueueCommunication vs Queue:• Communication Framework is an abstraction around

publisher/subscriber. It can be implemented:– with database and HTTP requests instead (webhooks)– in-memory (observers)

• Queue is a Transport layer for Communication– configuration of RabbitMQ adapter and topology

API OUT Using RabbitMQ

Goal: Magento Sends Messages to RabbitMQ

• Scripts: https://github.com/vrann/http-rabbitmq-writer

Messenger

API

callback.php

response.php

Before: Sender Interface Using HTTP Request

Now: Sender Interface Using RabbitMQReplace preference for MessageSenderInterface in di.xml, Add “Remote” suffix

Interface implementation will be auto-generated:

Publisher & Topology

queue_publisher.xml maps generated topic to the exchange

queue_topology.xml configures exchange to queue bindings

• Prior to Magento EE 2.2 these config are in queue.xml

Wrap Up

• We covered:– Reasons behind Magento Web API data structures– Reasons to use queues– Switch from Web API to the RabbitMQ – Code generation of API OUT for RabbitMQ– Communication framework vs Queue framework– Separation of publishers, consumers, topology in 2.2– Input Message Handling– Facebook bots!

• https://github.com/vrann/facebook-chatbot• https://github.com/vrann/http-rabbitmq-writer• https://github.com/vrann/magebot

Q&AWrite me @vrann (twitter, github)etulika@magento.com