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Creating Your Own Bot From Scratch
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This document outlines the steps required to create your first bot with Rocket.Chat.
Steps to create a bot
1. Create a bot user
In order to talk to your chatbot, there must be a user account pre-configured on the Rocket.Chat server that the bot can use to log in.
To add user accounts, you need to have admin privileges:
Navigate to Administration > Workspace > Users.
Click +New to create a new user.
Fill in the user information, verify the user, and assign it a
bot
role.Click Save
Once saved, the bot's credentials can be configured with the CHAT_USER
and ROCKETCHAT_PASSWORD
environmental variables of your bot.
To avoid creating multiple accounts for bot emails, you can use Gmail +
address
alias. For example:[email protected]
. See this issue for further details.
2. Code your bot
To make the process of coding a bot easier and faster, you may want to check our existing guides below to deploy a basic bot instance quickly. As an advanced alternative, you can create your bot from scratch using your favorite framework.
Developing a Hubot can serve as a good entry point in learning chatbot principles.
3. Talk to your bot
If the bot is configured to listen to direct messages RESPOND_TO_DM=true
, and messages are prepended with BOT_NAME
or a preconfigured BOT_ALIAS
, the bot will usually respond to all messages addressed directly to the bot user (depending on the particular bot framework).