Supply history on startup

Some folks are interested in initializing WebChat with a history.

Since DirectLine doesn’t archive messages, the bot would have to archive them separately.

Here are a couple of possible approaches:

• The web page could get the archived message out of band, e.g. by calling an endpoint provided by the bot. Then passes those to a new property and/or API in WebChat.
• The Bot Framework could enable a hook on the channel side where the bot supplies an archiveProvider of some kind. If it exists, DirectLine sends those messages to the WebChat. This has the advantage of working with any deployment of WebChat out of the box, but requires a lot of new plumbing in the Bot Framework.

This is clearly half-baked so I’m opening up a dialog.

[ancashoria]

@morphaxceed here’s the full code:

import { Chat } from 'botframework-webchat'

export interface IMessage {
  from: string,
  text: string,
  attachments?: any[],
  date?: string,
}

class SuperChat extends Chat {
  constructor(props: IProps) {
    super(props)
    const history = this.buildHistory(
      props.conversation.messages,
      0,
      props.conversation.customerAddress,
      props.user.id
    )
    this.injectMessages(history)
  }

  buildHistory(messages, startIndex, customerAddress, agentId) {
    const conversationId = customerAddress.conversation.id
    const customerName = customerAddress.user.name
    return messages.map((message, messageIndex) => ({
      type: "message",
      text: message.text,
      from: {
        id: message.from === 'agent' || message.from === 'bot' ? agentId : '',
        name: message.from === 'user' ? customerName : message.from
      },
      attachments: message.attachments,
      timestamp: message.date,
      id: `${conversationId}|${startIndex + messageIndex}`,
    }))
  }

  injectMessages(messages: any[]) {
    messages.forEach(activity => {
      this.store.dispatch({
        type: 'Receive_Message',
        activity
      })
    })
  }
}

customerAddress is created by botframework and you can get it from session object Here’s the interface for customerAddress https://docs.botframework.com/en-us/node/builder/chat-reference/interfaces/_botbuilder_d_.iaddress.html

In buildHistory() I do extra checks that you don’t need. Make sure you return the same object structure and you should be fine. Also, this code is tested only on webchat version 0.10.8

Hope it helps

[EricDahlvang]

@khmerforce Here is a node conversation-history sample: https://github.com/EricDahlvang/BotBuilder-Samples/blob/eric/node_conversationHistory/samples/javascript_nodejs/22.conversation-history/README.md