Chowbot

This is a restaurant chatbot that assists customers in placing orders for their preferred meals.

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Live URL

https://chowbot.herokuapp.com

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About Chowbot

Features

• User can place orders for their preferred meals.
• User can view, cancel or checkout a pending order.
• User can view order history, including cancelled orders.

How it Works

Chowbot is easy to use. It will provide the user with a list of options, and the user will select an option by responding with the corresponding number. For example, A typical workflow:

• Chowbot will prompt the user to select an option from the main menu.
• The user will select 1 to place an order.
• Chowbot will prompt the user to select a meal from the menu.
• The user will select 1 to select the first meal on the menu.
• Chowbot will prompt the user to select another meal or go back to main menu.
• The user will select 0 to go back to the main menu.
• Chowbot will prompt the user to select an option from the main menu.
• The user will select 99 to proceed to checkout.
• Chowbot will send a comfirmatory message, and prompt the user to select an option from the main menu.

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API

Models

User

field	data_type	constraints
userId	string	required, unique
orders	[ orderSchema ]
chatHistory	ref - Chat

Order Schema

field	data_type	constraints
status	string	required, enum: ["pending", "confirmed", "cancelled"]
date	string	required
items	[ name: string, price: number, qty: number ]	required
total	number

Chat

field	data_type	constraints
message	string	required, trim
isBot	boolean	required
user	ref - User

Menu

field	data_type	constraints
name	string	required
price	number	required

Events

Server

event	payload	description
message	eventName, message, isBot	Sends a message to the client.
chatHistory	eventName, message, isBot	Sends a message from the chat history to the client. Emitted when getChatHistory() method is called

Event Payload

field	data_type	description
message	string	The message to be sent
data	any	Additional data to be sent
eventName	string	The name of the event being emitted
isBot	boolean	Indicates if a message was initialised by the bot or the user

Client

event	description
message	Sends a message to the server
menu	Sends a message to the server and triggers the server's handleMenu() method for processing menu selections

Event Payload

field	data_type	description
eventName	string	The name of the event
input	string	The message to be sent to the server

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Development

Prerequisites

• Make sure you have Nodejs installed.
• Make sure you have MongoDB installed and running, or use MongoDB Atlas for a cloud-based database.
• Make sure you have a Sentry account for error logging. If you don't want to use Sentry, you can remove the sentry middleware from backend/src/middleware/sentry.js and backend/src/app.js.

Starting the app

• Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/misspee007/chowbot.git

• Navigate to the root folder, copy the .env.example file and fill in the values.

cp .env.example .env

• Navigate to frontend directory and install dependencies

cd frontend && npm install

• Run build command

npm run build

The build command will create a dist folder in the frontend directory. This folder will be used by the backend server to serve the frontend files.

• Open another terminal, navigate to backend directory, install dependencies and start server

cd backend && npm install
npm run start

• Go to http://localhost:\ to view. The default PORT is 3399.

Seeding the database

• Run the seeder script to clear the database and seed it with menu items.

npm run seed

File Structure

.
├── backend
│   ├── src
│   │   ├── controllers
│   │   │   └── OrderingSession.js //contains the logic for the ordering session
│   │   ├── config
│   │   │   └── index.js //contains the configuration for the app (i.e initialisation of env variables)
│   │   ├── database
│   │   │   ├── db.js //contains the connection to the database
│   │   │   ├── seeder.js //contains the logic for seeding the database. The seeder script will run this file.
│   │   │   └── index.js
│   │   ├── middleware
│   │   │   ├── sentry.js //contains the config for the sentry logging middleware
│   │   │   └── session.js //contains the config for the express-session middleware
│   │   ├── models
|   |   |   ├── chatModel.js
|   |   |   ├── menuModel.js
|   |   |   ├── userModel.js
│   │   │   └── index.js
│   │   └── utils
│   │       ├── orderSession.utils.js //helper functions and constand data for the ordering session component
│   │       ├── constants.js //contains constants used in the app
│   │       └── server.utils.js //helpers for server.js
│   ├── app.js //express app
│   ├── package-lock.json
│   ├── package.json //contains the dependencies for the backend
│   └── server.js //socket.io server
├── frontend
│   ├── src
│   │   ├── config
│   │   │   └── index.js
│   │   ├── App.jsx //main app component
│   │   └── index.html
│   ├── vite.config.js
│   ├── package-lock.json
│   └── package.json //contains the dependencies for the frontend
├── .env.example
├── .gitignore
├── package.json //contains the scripts for the app used in production. Not recommended for development.
|── Procfile //contains the command to start the app in production
└── README.md

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Main Tools

• Nodejs - Backend runtime
• Express - Backend framework
• MongoDB - Database
• Mongoose - MongoDB object modeling
• Socket.io - Websocket library
• Express-Session - Session management
• Reactjs - Frontend framework
• React-Bootstrap - UI library
• Vite - Frontend build tool
• Sentry - Error logging and monitoring

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Author

Precious Abubakar | [email protected]