Create messages in the v3 JavaScript SDK

Article
09/7/2017

APPLIES TO: SDK v3

Communication between the bot and the user is through messages. Your bot will send message activities to communicate information to users, and likewise, will also receive message activities from users. Some messages may simply consist of plain text, while others may contain richer content such as text to be spoken, suggested actions, media attachments, rich cards, and channel-specific data.

This article describes some of the commonly-used message methods you can use to enhance your user experience.

Default message handler

The Bot Framework SDK for Node.js comes with a default message handler built into the session object. This message handler allows you to send and receive text messages between the bot and the user.

Send a text message

Sending a text message using the default message handler is simple, just call session.send and pass in a string.

This sample shows how you can send a text message to greet the user.

session.send("Good morning.");

This sample shows how you can send a text message using JavaScript string template.

var msg = `You ordered: ${order.Description} for a total of $${order.Price}.`;
session.send(msg); //msg: "You ordered: Potato Salad for a total of $5.99."

Receive a text message

When a user sends the bot a message, the bot receives the message through the session.message property.

This sample shows how to access the user's message.

var userMessage = session.message.text;

Customizing a message

To have more control over the text formatting of your messages, you can create a custom message object and set the properties necessary before sending it to the user.

This sample shows how to create a custom message object and set the text, textFormat, and textLocale properties.

var customMessage = new builder.Message(session)
    .text("Hello!")
    .textFormat("plain")
    .textLocale("en-us");
session.send(customMessage);

In cases where you do not have the session object in scope, you can use bot.send method to send a formatted message to the user.

The textFormat property of a message can be used to specify the format of the text. The textFormat property can be set to plain, markdown, or xml. The default value for textFormat is markdown.

Message property

The Message object has an internal data property that it uses to manage the message being sent. Other properties you set are through the different methods this object expose to you.

Message methods

Message properties are set and retrieved through the object's methods. The table below provide a list of the methods you can call to set/get the different Message properties.

Method	Description
`addAttachment(attachment:AttachmentType)`	Adds an attachment to a message
`addEntity(obj:Object)`	Adds an entity to the message.
`address(adr:IAddress)`	Address routing information for the message. To send user a proactive message, save the message's address in the userData bag.
`attachmentLayout(style:string)`	Hint for how clients should layout multiple attachments. The default value is 'list'.
`attachments(list:AttachmentType)`	A list of cards or images to send to the user.
`compose(prompts:string[], ...args:any[])`	Composes a complex and randomized reply to the user.
`entities(list:Object[])`	Structured objects passed to the bot or user.
`inputHint(hint:string)`	Hint sent to user letting them know if the bot is expecting further input or not. The built-in prompts will automatically populate this value for outgoing messages.
`localTimeStamp((optional)time:string)`	Local time when message was sent (set by client or bot, Ex: 2016-09-23T13:07:49.4714686-07:00.)
`originalEvent(event:any)`	Message in original/native format of the channel for incoming messages.
`sourceEvent(map:ISourceEventMap)`	For outgoing messages can be used to pass source specific event data like custom attachments.
`speak(ssml:TextType, ...args:any[])`	Sets the speak field of the message as Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML). This will be spoken to the user on supported devices.
`suggestedActions(suggestions:ISuggestedActions` \| `IIsSuggestedActions)`	Optional suggested actions to send to the user. Suggested actions will be displayed only on the channels that support suggested actions.
`summary(text:TextType, ...argus:any[])`	Text to be displayed as fall-back and as short description of the message content in (e.g.: List of recent conversations.)
`text(text:TextType, ...args:any[])`	Sets the message text.
`textFormat(style:string)`	Set the text format. Default format is markdown.
`textLocale(locale:string)`	Set the target language of the message.
`toMessage()`	Gets the JSON for the message.
`composePrompt(session:Session, prompts:string[], args?:any[])`	Combines an array of prompts into a single localized prompt and then optionally fills the prompts template slots with the passed in arguments.
`randomPrompt(prompts:TextType)`	Gets a random prompt from the array of *prompts that is passed in.

Next step

Send and receive attachments