Development adapter

Adapter Basics

All adapters inherit from the Adapter class in the src/adapter.coffee file. There are certain methods that you will want to override. Here is a basic stub of what an extended Adapter class would look like:

class Sample extends Adapter

  constructor: ->
    super
    @robot.logger.info "Constructor"

  send: (envelope, strings...) ->
    @robot.logger.info "Send"

  reply: (envelope, strings...) ->
    @robot.logger.info "Reply"

  run: ->
    @robot.logger.info "Run"
    @emit "connected"
    user = new User 1001, name: 'Sample User'
    message = new TextMessage user, 'Some Sample Message', 'MSG-001'
    @robot.receive message


exports.use = (robot) ->
  new Sample robot

Setting Up Your Development Environment

1. Create a new folder for your adapter hubot-sample
   • mkdir hubot-sample
2. Change your working directory to hubot-sample
   • cd hubot-sample
3. Run npm init to create your package.json
   • make sure the entry point is src/sample.coffee
4. Add your .gitignore to include node_modules
5. Edit the src/sample.coffee file to include the above stub for your adapter
6. Edit the package.json to add a peer dependency on hubot

  "dependencies": {
  },
  "peerDependencies": {
    "hubot": ">=2.0"
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "coffee-script": ">=1.2.0"
  }

1. Generate your Hubot using the yo hubot command
2. Change working directories to the hubot you created in step 7.
3. Now perform an npm link to add your adapter to hubot
   • npm link ../hubot-sample
4. Run hubot -a sample

Gotchas

There is a an open issue in the node community around npm linked peer dependencies not working. To get this working for our project you will need to do some minor changes to your code.

1. For the import in your hubot-sample adapter, add the following code

  try
    {Robot,Adapter,TextMessage,User} = require 'hubot'
  catch
    prequire = require('parent-require')
    {Robot,Adapter,TextMessage,User} = prequire 'hubot'

1. In your hubot-sample folder, modify the package.json to include the following dependency so this custom import mechanism will work

  "dependencies": {
    "parent-require": "^1.0.0"
  }

1. Now try running hubot -a sample again and see that the imports are properly loaded.
2. Once this is working properly, you can build out the functionality of your adapter as you see fit. Take a look at some of the other adapters to get some ideas for your implementation.
   • Once packaged and deployed via npm, you won’t need the dependency in hubot anymore since the peer dependency should work as an official module.