Packaging your code for ChatterBot

There are cases where developers may want to contribute code to ChatterBot but for various reasons it doesn’t make sense or isn’t possible to add the code to the main ChatterBot repository on GitHub.

Common reasons that code can’t be contributed include:

  • Licencing: It may not be possible to contribute code to ChatterBot due to a licencing restriction or a copyright.
  • Demand: There needs to be a general demand from the open source community for a particular feature so that there are developers who will want to fix and improve the feature if it requires maintenance.

In addition, all code should be well documented and thoroughly tested.

Package directory structure

Suppose we want to create a new logic adapter for ChatterBot and add it the Python Package Index (PyPI) so that other developers can install it and use it. We would begin doing this by setting up a directory file the following structure.

Python Module Structure
IronyAdapter/
|-- README
|-- setup.py
|-- irony_adapter
|   |-- __init__.py
|   |-- logic.py
|-- tests
|-- |-- __init__.py
|-- |-- test_logic.py

More information on creating Python packages can be found here: https://packaging.python.org/tutorials/distributing-packages/

Register on PyPI

Create an account: https://pypi.python.org/pypi?%3Aaction=register_form

Create a .pypirc configuration file.

.pypirc file contents
[distutils]
index-servers =
pypi

[pypi]
username=my_username
password=my_password

Generate packages

python setup.py sdist bdist_wheel

Upload packages

The official tool for uploading Python packages is called twine. You can install twine with pip if you don’t already have it installed.

pip install twine

twine upload dist/*

Install your package locally

cd IronyAdapter
pip install . --upgrade

Using your package

If you are creating a module that ChatterBot imports from a dotted module path then you can set the following in your chat bot.

chatbot = ChatBot(
    "My ChatBot",
    logic_adapters=[
        "irony_adapter.logic.IronyAdapter"
    ]
)

Testing your code

from unittest import TestCase


class IronyAdapterTestCase(TestCase):
    """
    Test that the irony adapter allows
    the chat bot to understand irony.
    """

    def test_irony(self):
       # TODO: Implement test logic
       self.assertTrue(response.irony)