You are viewing documentation for our open source project which is maintained by the community. If you want to get started building assistants with Rasa please check out our latest [documentation here](/content/docs/index.html). If you already have an existing website and want to add a Rasa assistant to it, you can use the [Rasa Chat Widget](https://legacy-docs-oss.rasa.com/docs/rasa/next/connectors/your-own-website/#chat-widget) a widget which you can incorporate into your existing webpage by adding a HTML snippet. Alternatively, you can also build your own chat widget. ## REST Channels The `RestInput` and `CallbackInput` channels can be used for custom integrations. They provide a URL where you can post messages and either receive response messages directly, or asynchronously via a webhook. ### RestInput The REST channel will provide you with a REST endpoint where you can post user messages and receive the assistant's messages in response. Add the REST channel to your credentials.yml: ```yaml rest: # you don't need to provide anything here - this channel doesn't require any credentials ``` Restart your Rasa server to make the REST channel available to receive messages. You can then send messages to `http://:/webhooks/rest/webhook`, replacing the host and port with the appropriate values from your running Rasa server. #### Request and Response Format After making the `rest` input channel available, you can `POST` messages to `http://:/webhooks/rest/webhook`, with the following format: ```json { "sender":"test_user", // sender ID of the user sending the message "message":"Hi there!" } ``` The response from Rasa will be a JSON body of bot responses, for example: ```json [ {"text":"Hey Rasa!"}, {"image":"http://example.com/image.jpg"} ] ``` ### CallbackInput The Callback channel behaves very much like the REST channel, but instead of directly returning the bot messages to the HTTP request that sends the message, it will call a URL you can specify to send bot messages. To use the callback channel, add the credentials to your `credentials.yml`: ```yaml callback: # URL to which Core will send the bot responses url:"http://localhost:5034/bot" ``` Restart your Rasa server to make the new channel endpoint available to receive messages. You can then send messages to `http://:/webhooks/callback/webhook`, replacing the host and port with the appropriate values from your running Rasa server. #### Request and Response Format After making the `callback` input available, you can `POST` messages to `http://:/webhooks/callback/webhook` with the following format: ```json { "sender":"test_user", // sender ID of the user sending the message "message":"Hi there!" } ``` If successful, the response will be `success`. Once Rasa is ready to send a message to the user, it will call the `url` specified in your `credentials.yml` with a `POST` request containing a JSON body of the bot's responses: ```json [ {"text":"Hey Rasa!"}, {"image":"http://example.com/image.jpg"} ] ``` ## Websocket Channel The SocketIO channel uses websockets and is real-time. To use the SocketIO channel, add the credentials to your `credentials.yml`: ```yaml socketio: user_message_evt: user_uttered bot_message_evt: bot_uttered session_persistence: true/false ``` The first two configuration values define the event names used by Rasa when sending or receiving messages over socket.io. The socket client can pass an object named metadata to supply metadata to the channel. You can configure an alternative key using the metadata_key setting. For example, if your client wants to pass metadata on a key named customData, the setting would be: ```yaml socketio: metadata_key: customData ``` Restart your Rasa server to make the new channel endpoint available to receive messages. You can then send messages to `http://:/socket.io`, replacing the host and port with the appropriate values from your running Rasa server. ##### session persistence By default, the SocketIO channel uses the socket id as `sender_id`, which causes the session to restart at every page reload. `session_persistence` can be set to `true` to avoid that. In that case, the frontend is responsible for generating a session id and sending it to the Rasa Core server by emitting the event `session_request` with `{session_id: [session_id]}` immediately after the `connect` event. The example [Webchat](https://github.com/botfront/rasa-webchat) implements this session creation mechanism (version >= 0.5.0). ##### SocketIO client / server compatibility The version of the SocketIO client connecting to Rasa must be compatible with the versions of the [python-socketio](https://github.com/miguelgrinberg/python-socketio) and [python-engineio](https://github.com/miguelgrinberg/python-engineio) packages used by Rasa. Please refer to the [`pyproject.toml`](https://github.com/RasaHQ/rasa/blob/main/pyproject.toml) file relative to your version of Rasa and the official `python-socketio` compatibility table. ### JWT Authentication The SocketIO channel can be optionally configured to perform JWT authentication on connect by defining the `jwt_key` and optional `jwt_method` in the `credentials.yml` file. ```yaml socketio: user_message_evt: user_uttered bot_message_evt: bot_uttered session_persistence: true jwt_key: my_public_key jwt_method: HS256 ``` When initially requesting the connection, the client should pass in an encoded payload as a JSON object under the key `token`: ```json { "token":"jwt_encoded_payload" } ``` ### Chat Widget Once you've set up your SocketIO channel, you can use the official Rasa Chat Widget on any webpage. Just paste the following into your site HTML and paste the URL of your Rasa instance into the `data-websocket-url` attribute: ```html
``` For more information, including how to fully customize the widget for your website, you can check out the [full documentation](https://chat-widget-docs.rasa.com/). Alternatively, if you want to embed the widget in a React app, there is [a library in the NPM package repository](https://www.npmjs.com/package/@rasahq/rasa-chat).