Stage

Stages, sometimes also called wizards or conversations, are a simple way to add a bit of life to your bot. They allow you to send input and wait for feedback before proceeding. For example, say your bot was being used to register a user for a service. You could ask questions like "What is your full name?" or "Would you have expected the Spanish Inquisition?" and receive responses.

In Tourmaline the Stage class tries to mock Tourmaline::Client as closely as possible, while providing an additional annotation called Step. Let's take a look at how a simple Stage might look:

class NameAsker(String) < Stage(T)
  @[Step(:name, initial: true)]
  def ask_name(client)
    send_message(self.chat_id, "What is your name?")

    # in will be passed to this block.
    self.await_response do |ctx|
      self.context = ctx.text
      self.exit
    end
  end
end

class MyBot < Tourmaline::Client
  @[Command("start")]
  def start_command(ctx)
    stage = NameAsker.enter(self, chat_id: ctx.message.chat_id, context: "")
    stage.on_exit do |name|
      ctx.message.respond("You entered #{name}")
    end
  end
end

Steps

Stages are composed of steps which are created either with Stage#on or with the Step annotation. If a step is tagged with initial: true it will be the first step in the series. If no step is tagged with initial: true you will have to manually transition to the step you want to start with by using Stage#transition.

Note

The main caviat, and it's a small one, is that you must either transition or exit from a step. If you don't your program will be stuck in a sort of limbo.

Here is an example of a simple transition:

@[Step(:name, initial: true)]
def ask_name(client)
  send_message(self.chat_id, "What is your name?")

  self.await_response do |ctx|
    self.context.name = ctx.text
    self.transition :age
  end
end

@[Step(:age)]
def ask_age(client)
  send_message(self.chat_id, "How about your age?")

  self.await_response do |ctx|
    self.context.age = ctx.age
    self.exit
  end
end

For a more example of Stage use, see examples/stage_bot.cr.