Here you will learn about other methods used on the Botmaker platform.
Estimated reading time: 03 minutes

Freemarker

We use Freemarker as a "template engine" for bot responses. You can get more information at the following link: Freemarker. We have certain functions written in this technology to facilitate common tasks, such as shortening URLs. In order to use it in sending a template, you must include this text within a variable:

• ${shortenURL('https://www.google.com/')} and it will be replaced by the URL in a short version.
• Methods
• JSON - ${json2('{a:"123"}').a}
• Stringify - ${stringify('[{"f": "a"},{"f": "b"}]'?eval[0])[0…2]}
• AddToArray - ${addToArray([1,2,3],4)}
• IsEmpty - ${isEmpty('')?then('s','n')}
• GetOrDefault - ${getOrDefault(null,'default')}
• DateISO - ${fromDateTimeToDateISO('13-12-2018')}
• Today - ${today()}
• TodayAddDays - ${todayAddDays(1)}
• TodayDateAddDays - ${todayDateAddDays(1)}
• ShortenURL - ${shortenURL('https://www.google.com/')}
• TimeDiff - ${timeDiff('10:00:00', '-3', 'HH:mm:ss', 'm', '83')}
• Bold - text
• Italic - text

Regular expressions

We use regular expressions to validate data entered by the client. Also, to find a certain combination of characters to trigger events or store that information in variables. You can get more information at the following link: Regular Expressions. An example of its use is to trigger the regular expression (.*) which refers to anything the client says.

Applications

Both functionalities can be combined with each other for different purposes. An example of this is to search for a code or word in the client's message to save it in a variable, so that we can work with it later.

• variable = ${lastUserSentence?matches(r"(.\b(textstringtosearch)\b.)")?groups[2]}

Written by Botmaker
Updated: 02/09/24