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Version: 0.15.17

LINE

This guide will give you some basic concepts of LINE bots. For more information, check official docs.

Requirements

  • LINE@ account
  • LINE Messaging API channel
    • access token
    • channel secret

You need a LINE@ account and a channel connected to that account to develop a LINE bot. You need the channel's access token and channel secret when you start.

LINE@

You need a LINE@ account for your bot to connect to. You can register a standard account or an approved account here.

After that, you can manage your LINE@ accounts at LINE@ MANAGER and set them up to use Messaging API for bots to connect to.

LINE Developers

After setting up LINE@ accounts to use Messaging API, further setup such as webhook, access token can be found at LINE developers. A LINE Login app or a Messaging API app is called a channel here.

Build Your First LINE Bot

Check out your channel's access token and channel secret at LINE developers then fill them in line-hello-world example:

const { LineBot } = require('bottender');

const bot = new LineBot({
  channelSecret: '__FILL_YOUR_SECRET_HERE__',
  accessToken: '__FILL_YOUR_TOKEN_HERE__',
});

Then run your server and try it out by talking to your LINE@ account!

Event Types

There are many different types of events your bot may receive from LINE. In Bottender, you can access them via context.event. For more information, check LineEvent Reference and official docs.

  • Message event
    • Text
    • Image
    • Video
    • Audio
    • File
    • Location
    • Sticker
  • Follow event
  • Unfollow event
  • Join event
  • Leave event
  • Postback event
  • Beacon event

For example:

bot.onEvent(async (context) => {
  if (context.event.isFollow) {
    await context.sendText('Hello, welcome to this bot!');
  } else if (context.event.isText && context.event.text === 'How are you?') {
    await context.sendText('I am fine.');
  } else {
    await context.sendText('I do not understand.');
  }
});

Message Types

There are many different types of messages you can send from your bot. In Bottender, you can use functions like context.sendText(), context.sendButtonTemplate() to send messages. For more information, check LineContext Reference and official docs.

  • Text
  • Sticker
  • Image
  • Video
  • Audio
  • Location
  • Imagemap
  • Flex
  • Template
    • Buttons
    • Confirm
    • Carousel
    • Image carousel

LINE Specific

Group Chats

LINE has 2 types of group chats, groups and rooms. For more information, check official docs.

You can invite your bot account into a group or a room. By doing so, the events will create group/room sessions. Send methods like context.sendText() will send to the group/room rather than to the private message to the sender in these contexts. You can still get the sender's profile with context.session.user.

If your LINE bot is connected to a LINE@ Approved account or an official account, you can access the group/room member IDs in context.session.group or context.session.room. If not, these properties will return an empty array [].

Beacons

With LINE Beacon, your bot can receive beacon webhook events whenever a LINE user enters or leaves the proximity of a beacon. Using beacons, you can customize your bot to interact with users in specific contexts. For more information, check official docs.

Signature Verification

To ensure that the request is sent from the LINE Platform, you should provide your channel secret so that Bottender can do signature validation for you. For more information, check official docs.

References