fbautorespond

A simple script to auto-respond to Facebook messages.

Description

I don't use Facebook but many of my friends do. I wanted a way to let my friends know that I would not receive their messages unless they sent them some other way.

This script allows you to set up a simple auto-responder that will be sent when a new conversation is started with you on Facebook messenger.

Usage

To configure the the script to run locally:

• Ensure you have node.js installed on your host machine.
• Checkout the repository or download the source
• From the project directory run npm install.

Then, command line usage is as follows:

$ node fbautorespond.js
Auto-respond to Facebook messages.

Options:
  --response              The response to send on new messages        [required]
  --email                 The email address to login with             [required]
  --password              The password to authenticate with
  --poll-other            Interval to poll for messages in the other folder
  --poll-pending          Interval to poll for messages in the pending folder
  --forget-threads-after  Time to wait before forgetting threads
  --log-level             [error|warn|info|verbose] - defaults to info

Message handling semantics

The default behaviour is to respond once and only once to each new thread. If you want to resend your auto-response after a given period you can use --forget-threads-after "<some duration>". Durations are specified as natural language strings, e.g "1 week", "2 hours" etc.

Additionally, by default only messages in the inbox are handled. If you want to auto-respond to messages in either the 'pending' or 'other' folders you can set a duration to poll for them using the --pol-pending and --poll-other switches.

Response templates

Response strings are templates where the following strings will be replaced:

• {{sender}}: replaced with the first name of the user who send the message being responded to.

Two-factor login

Two-factor login is not implemented right now though it is supported by the underlying library I use to interact with Facebook so it shouldn't be too hard to handle it if needed. Feel free to submit a pull-request if you have the time to make it work.

Using a proxy server

HTTP proxy servers are supported: just set the HTTPS_PROXY environment variable correctly and you should be good to go.

Remote kill-switch

Active Facebook sessions can be tracked and managed here: sessions can be killed remotely at that page.

Hosting

The script is Dockerized for easy deployment on a server somewhere. You can configure the script by setting the following environment variables:

• FB_AUTORESPOND_RESPONSE
• FB_AUTORESPOND_EMAIL
• FB_AUTORESPOND_PASSWORD
• FB_AUTORESPOND_FORGET_THREADS_AFTER
• FB_AUTORESPOND_LOG_LEVEL

TODO

• [] Run unit-tests on automated builds.
• [] Document golden path for running in the cloud.
• [] Fix website and link to it in the project description on Github.
• [] Integrate prettier.js

Donations

If you find this software useful, donations are more than welcome:

• Bitcoin: 1E23XPM4439kEELbPx4PqK9JSjBWaTJucB
• Monero: 4HNxmqCg8o4f9uCMN7aS8VUcXRf5nfUX8VK4xWENDViGhNSf559AJxkRzm5TnRgtUG7C3CLiMtmgpT1VSirkoHN7EvbuJQZ3hY8QBvh1GS

Credits

• All the heavy lifting is done using the facebook-chat-api module. `