Secure Tunnel to Localhost for Instant Messenger¶

In order to make your chatbot answering to requests from your Instant Messenger users, you need to register a WebHook to automatically being called once updates are available.

To do this, you must specify a callback URL on instant messenger provider’s webpage to receive incoming updates via an outbound webhook. Whenever there is an update for your chatbot, the instant messenger provider sends an HTTPS POST request to the specified URL, which usually contains a JSON update. In case of an unsuccessful request, the provider will give up after a reasonable amount of attempts.

If you have installed the Business Bot Platform locally and the Webhook URL is is not directly accessible from the Internet, you will need a tunnel to forward the requests to your local address via an address available on the Internet. This is especially useful for the development and debugging of business logics for chatbots on the Business Bot Platform.

The tunnel provider ngrok https://ngrok.com/docs exposes local servers behind NATs and firewalls to the public internet over secure tunnels. The provider was validated with the Business Bot Platform and offer you a free basic account. However, other tunnel providers can also be used for this purpose.