Getting Started

The example chatbot comes with a sample template (eHailing chatbot) -
see my LinkedIn post here

Checkout the Official getting started to WhatsApp Cloud API.

Since JAWCE is developed with Java (porting to Kotlin WIP 🚧) it is natural that chatbot templates (conversation flow) are saved in the project src/main/resources/templates folder.

• Clone JAWCE

  Clone or download the JAWCE chatbot sample project:

  git clone git@github.com:DonnC/jawce.git
  

  After successful clone, open the project in an IDE of your choice

• Install dependencies

  Install project maven dependencies

  From now on, we will focus on the example folder with the sample chatbot

• Setup Credentials

  Remember the WhatsApp Credentials we mentioned?

  Navigate to the /jchatbot/src/main/resources/application.yml properties file and replace secret keys with your account credentials

  chatbot:
      configs:
          # ...
          hub-token: "replace-with-your-hub-token"
          access-token: "replace-with-your-access-token"
          phone-number-id: "replace-with-your-phone-number-id"
  

• Test Run

  Before you run the project, setup the full path to the project resources folder

  resources:
      templates: ..full/path/to/templates
      triggers: ..full/path/to/triggers
      watcher: ..full/path/to/watch
  

  E.g If you cloned the project in

  C:\Users\me\projects\jawce

  Your path folders will be as

  C:\\Users\\me\\projects\\jawce\\example\\jchatbot\\src\\main\\resources\\templates

  If all goes well,

  Start your development server

  Run the chatbot project, if all goes well. It should run on the port configured in the application properties file.

• Webhook Config

  If the example chatbot run successfully. You can configure NGROK to tunnel your local setup to obtain an HTTPS webhook to configure on Meta developer portal.

  In a new terminal, do

  ngrok http 8080
  

  The webhook url will be accessible on https://ngrok-url/jawce/webhook which you can use to configure on your meta developer application portal as below

  

  Example dev console portal config