How will can respond

Will can respond in a variety of ways, and since he's pure python, your imagination is the limit.

Talk to the room

Like any normal person, will can talk to the chat room, or in 1-1 chats. To talk to the room in your plugins, you'll want to use the self.say() method.

@respond_to("bonjour")
def say_bonjour_will(self, message):
    # Awesome stuff
    self.say("Bonjour!")

Bonjour!

say() comes with a number of options, including color, html, and ping notify. 

self.say(content, channel=None, html=False, color="green", notify=False)

Reply with a mention

Sometimes you want will to ping you - that's where @name mentions are great. To do those in will, you'll want to use self.reply()

@respond_to("^hi")   # Basic
def hi(self, message):
    self.reply("hello, %s!" % message.sender.handle)

Hi, Hello, username!

All the options: 

self.reply(content, html=False, color="green", notify=False, start_thread=False)

Talk to the room from a webhook

When will recieves messages from webhooks and HTTP requests, he's still connected to chat, and you can use .say(). By default, he'll speak to DEFAULT_ROOM.

@route("/ping")
def ping(self):
    self.say("PONG!")
    # or
    self.say("PONG!", room="ping-pong", service="slack")

If you want to talk to a different room, you can pass in the channel with the name of the channel or room you want to talk to. If you have multiple services connected, just pass service with the one you want.

Send an email

Will has one email backend at the moment, via mailgun. If you've set DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL, MAILGUN_API_URL, and MAILGUN_API_KEY, you can use self.send_email()

@respond_to("status report")
def send_status_report(self):
    self.send_email(email_list=['jill@example.com'], subject="Here's the latest report", message=rendered_template("report.html", {}))

Here's all the options:

self.send_email(from_email=None, email_list=[], subject="", message="")

Schedule a reply for the future

Sometimes, you want will to make plans for the future. That's where self.schedule_say() comes in handy.

@randomly(start_hour='10', end_hour='17', day_of_week="mon-fri", num_times_per_day=1)
def walkmaster(self):
    now = datetime.datetime.now()
    in_5_minutes = now + datetime.timedelta(minutes=5)

    self.say("@all Walk happening in 5 minutes!")
    self.schedule_say("@all It's walk time!", in_5_minutes)

The options are pretty much the same as self.say, with the addition of the when parameter.

self.schedule_say(content, when, message=None, channel=None, html=False, color="green", notify=False)

Set the topic

Sometimes, it's good to give the conversation some direction. Will can set the topic in hipchat using self.set_topic()

import requests

@respond_to("new topic")
def give_us_somethin_to_talk_about(self, message):
    r = requests.get("http://chatoms.com/chatom.json?Normal=1&Fun=2&Philosophy=3&Out+There=4")
    data = r.json()
    self.set_topic(data["text"], message=message)

Note: you can't set the topic of a 1-1 chat. Will will complain politely. All options:

self.set_topic(topic, message=None, channel=None)

Do any python thing

Will is Just Python. Because of that, your imagination is the limit of what he can do to respond to requests.

Here's a few things our will does, every day:

Will is open-source, and PRs are very welcome. If someone wants to write self.send_sms(), or anything else, it's all yours!

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