Configuration

You will need to store some information for your bot. This includes the OAuth credentials, timestamps, etc. Chatterbot offers a whole bunch of different methods of storing the config for your bot:

  1. Your credentials can be stored as variables in the script itself. If you generate a bot via chatterbot-register, the file will have these variables specified. However, if your bot source code is going to be public, you should NOT do this. Anyone who has your credentials can do nasty things with your Twitter account. Also, if your bot is using replies or searches, chatterbot will need to track some state information, and that data will be written to a YAML file.
  2. In a YAML file with the same name as the bot, so if you have botname.rb or a Botname class, store your config in botname.yaml. chatterbot-register will also create this file. If you are using git or another source code control system, you should NOT store this file! It will be updated every time your bots run.
  3. In a global config file at /etc/chatterbot.yml – values stored here will apply to any bots you run.
  4. In another global config file specified in the environment variable 'chatterbot_config'.
  5. In a global.yml file in the same directory as your bot. This gives you the ability to have a global configuration file, but keep it with your bots if desired.
  6. In a database. You can read more about this on the Advanced Features page