Facebook Messenger

The facebook notification platform enables sending notifications via Facebook Messenger, powered by Facebook.

To use this notification platform in your installation, add the following to your configuration.yaml file:

# Example configuration.yaml entry
notify:
  - name: NOTIFIER_NAME
    platform: facebook
    page_access_token: FACEBOOK_PAGE_ACCESS_TOKEN

Configuration variables:

• page_access_token (Required): Access token for your Facebook page. Checkout Facebook Messenger Platform for more information.
• name (Optional): Setting the optional parameter name allows multiple notifiers to be created. The default value is notify. The notifier will bind to the service notify.NOTIFIER_NAME.

Usage

With Facebook notify service, you can send your notifications to your Facebook messenger with help of your Facebook page. You have to create a Facebook Page and App for this service. You can control it by calling the notify service as described here. It will send a message on messenger to user specified by target on behalf of your page. See the quick start guide for more information. The phone number used in target should be registered with Facebook messenger. Phone number of the recipient should be in +1(212)555-2368 format. If your app is not approved by Facebook then the recipient should by either admin, developer or tester for your Facebook app. More information about the phone number.

# Example automation notification entry
automation:
  - alias: Evening Greeting
    trigger:
      platform: sun
      event: sunset
    action:
      service: notify.facebook
      data:
        message: 'Good Evening'
        target:
          - '+919413017584'
          - '+919784516314'

You can also send messages to users that do not have stored their phone number with Facebook, but this requires a bit more work. The Messenger platform uses page specific user IDs instead of a global user ID. You will need to enable a webhook for the “messages” event in Facebook’s developer console. Once a user writes a message to a page, that webhook will then receive the user’s page specific ID as part of the webhook’s payload. Below is a simple PHP script that reacts to the message “get my id” and sends a reply containing the user’s ID:

<?php

$access_token = "";
$verify_token = "";

if (isset($_REQUEST['hub_challenge'])) {
    $challenge        = $_REQUEST['hub_challenge'];
    $hub_verify_token = $_REQUEST['hub_verify_token'];

    if ($hub_verify_token === $verify_token) {
        echo $challenge;
    }
}

$input   = json_decode(file_get_contents('php://input'), true);
$sender  = $input['entry'][0]['messaging'][0]['sender']['id'];
$message = $input['entry'][0]['messaging'][0]['message']['text'];

if (preg_match('/get my id/', strtolower($message))) {
    $url      = 'https://graph.facebook.com/v2.10/me/messages?access_token=' . $access_token;
    $ch       = curl_init($url);
    $jsonData = '{
        "recipient":{
            "id":"' . $sender . '"
        },
        "message":{
            "text":"Your ID: ' . $sender . '"
        }
      }';

    $jsonDataEncoded = $jsonData;
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $jsonDataEncoded);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, ['Content-Type: application/json']);

    if (!empty($input['entry'][0]['messaging'][0]['message'])) {
        $result = curl_exec($ch);
    }
}

Rich messages

You could also send rich messing (cards, buttons, images, videos, etc). Info to which types or messages and how to build them.

# Example script with a notification entry with rich message

script:
  test_fb_notification:
    sequence:
      - service: notify.facebook
        data:
          message: Some text before the quick replies
          target: 0034643123212
          data:
            quick_replies:
              - content_type: text
                title: Red
                payload: DEVELOPER_DEFINED_PAYLOAD_FOR_PICKING_RED
              - content_type: text
                title: Blue
                payload: DEVELOPER_DEFINED_PAYLOAD_FOR_PICKING_BLUE