cab-assistant

A tutorial for making your own Uber cab assistant using Facebook Messenger Platform, AWS API Gateway and Lambda and Uber API.

This repository contains code accompanying this blog post.

Install dependencies

• Install required libraries using pip. You need to install these libraries at a level of the function main.py.

    pip install requests pytz -t functions/process_chat
  

AWS Credentials & API Gateway

• # for AWS, if you haven't already
• You need AWS credentials to access its services like API Gateway and Lambda. We will do it using IAM (Identity and Access Management) user.
• Follow this guide to setup your IAM user, its permissions and get its credentials
• Also use the above guide to build and test an example API and create your own API endpoint.

Facebook App and Page

• Follow this quick start guide to create a Facebook app and page
• For step 2 in the guide, use the API endpoint created above as the callback url
• In step 2, you will be asked to enter a verify token. Enter any string you want to and use the same string for the variable FB_VERIFY_TOKEN in main.py
• Before you can verify and save, you need to deploy your code to AWS Lambda

Lambda Code Deployment

• We will use Apex to deploy the code. This page also has instructions to get started.
• Install Apex
• Add the AWS credentials to your environment and IAM role to project.json
• Now deploy the code with by running apex deploy in the terminal
• Your code should now be deployed to Lambda

Link API Gateway to Lambda

• Now use the API gateway dashboard to integrate your API endpoint with the newly created lambda function

Facebook Page Access Token

• Now complete steps 2 & 3 of the Messenger quick start guide.
• Get the page access token and assign it to the variable FB_PAGE_ACCESS_TOKEN in main.py
• Re-deploy the code
• Complete step 5 of the quick start guide
• For testing purposes change the code in main.py to echo back your chat messages
• Once you do this you can move on the Uber's API

Uber API

• You will have to # with your Uber account and register an application with them here.
• You will be asked to enter a redirect uri. You can enter http://localhost:8000
• You will be provided with a client_id, secret, and server_token.
• Assign the server_token to the variable UBER_SERVER_TOKEN in main.py
• Now you need your own access token to book rides via the API
• Follow the authentication guide to get your access token
• Make sure you authorize your self for all scopes. More on scopes here
• Once you get the access token assign it to UBER_ACCESS_TOKEN in main.py

You are now ready to go.

You can reach me on Twitter if you have any questions.