How to set botfields by Name with /fb/page/setBotFieldByName

ninjawarrior — Sun, 20 Sep 2020 16:07:49 +0000

The curl command as displayed on the ManyChat API Swagger is:

curl -X POST "https://api.manychat.com/fb/page/setBotFieldByName" -H "accept: application/json" -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d "{ \"field_name\": \"string\", \"field_value\": \"'string', 123, true, '2018-07-18', '2018-07-02T00:00:00+00:00'\"}"

The purpose of this API is the same as the one in our previous chapter, which is to set a botfield value in your ManyChat account. However, this particular API uses the BotField Name.

Why would you need this?

A use case could be: setting a botfield for a license key to your platform, a language string, a business address or phone number etcetera. Anything static throughout the chatbot.

This is the default response on a successful request

{
  "status": "success"
}

So how do we use this in our own system?

We assume you started in the First chapter of this course, and are now aware of the creation of the class file and the config file.
Those files are being used in ALL scripts we explain in the course. If you missed it, go here and read it.

First we will add a new function to our class file in classes/manychat.class.php.

    /**
     * 
     * @param type $bot_field_name
     * @param type $bot_field_value
     * @param type $mc_api
     * @return boolean
     */
    function setBotFieldByName($bot_field_name, $bot_field_value, $mc_api = '123456:ABCDEF')
    {

        $bot_field_vars = [
            'field_name'        => $bot_field_name,
            'field_value' => $bot_field_value
        ];

        $postfields_bot_field_vars = json_encode($bot_field_vars);

        $ch            = curl_init();
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "https://api.manychat.com/fb/page/setBotField");
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, 'POST');
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $postfields_bot_field_vars . PHP_EOL);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
        $headers       = [
            'Authorization: Bearer ' . preg_replace("/^(\w+\s+)/", "", $mc_api),
            'Accept: application/json',
            'Content-Type: application/json'
        ];
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $headers);
        $server_output = curl_exec($ch);
        curl_close($ch);

        $json_obj  = json_decode($server_output);
        $good_call = $json_obj->status;

        if ($good_call == "success") {
            return $json_obj;
        } else {
            return false;
        }
    }

As mentioned in the previous chapter, we will use this lesson to make it a bit more advanced. Instead of using the PHP script similar to what we showed in each previous topic, we will create a more advanced version that will process the updating of botfields.

On with the cool stuff

Now we continue with a couple things, let’s recap what we’ll need:

a script with HTML to display the botfields in a select menu
a script to process the botfield update and show the result

Let’s start with 1.) and create the PHP file with HTML form. Please note this is all very bare, you need to make it your own with nice bootstrap stylesheets and whatnot. We call the file page_get_botfields_select.php



    
        BotFields
        
        
        
        
    
    

        
            
                
                getBotFields($mc_api);

                echo "
            
            
                New Bot Value

The above page will look like this:

After we created the new PHP file with HTML Form for the botfields, we will create a new PHP script and call it page_set_bot_field_by_name.php.

setBotFieldByName($bot_field_name, $bot_field_value, $mc_api);
if ($page_setBotField->status == "success") {
    echo "You updated a BotField with the name " . $bot_field_name . " to its new value " . $bot_field_value;
} else {
    echo "We could not set your BotField value";
}

That is basically all it needs to make a form with the ability to update your botfield. Be aware of the file types though, you could go more in detail to split the botfields by type and use different input form types (boolean, number, text, date, datetime) based on the selected botfield, but that is all your call. Consider it a great assignment that concludes the Page API Class.

In our next section, we are going to talk about the Sending API, which is an API to send your suscriber content without using a ManyChat flow.

Set Botfield By Name – Chatbot Dojo

How to set botfields by Name with /fb/page/setBotFieldByName

Why would you need this?

So how do we use this in our own system?

On with the cool stuff