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Good evening, just saw that Facebook released his messenger bot toolkit and i immediately jumped right into it to learn more about it and maybe try to do my own.

My problem is that i don't have a https website running and it requires a https valid url. I tried to use my local web-server that has a certificate but it doesn't work.

My question is if this is possible to be done using a localhost url at all.

Thank you in advance

Query
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  • I tried it using ngrok as described in the link below and I got it to work. https://sumwu.me/blog/page/9/how-to-create-a-facebook-messenger-bot/ – bvsdev May 01 '16 at 01:44

3 Answers3

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Actually this is possible with localhost. Use ngrok. It allows you to open localhost to the public web, over http or https. This should only be used for testing however.

dankram
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If you want to test webhooks on your local environment, I would try ultrahook.com, you can get an API Key for free and the tool creates a tunnel from a public URL to your computer. This is from their FAQs page:

You download and run the UltraHook client on your computer. It connects to UltraHook servers in the cloud and creates a tunnel from a public endpoint on our servers to your computer. Any HTTP POST requests sent to the public end point will be sent through the tunnel an delivered to a private endpoint accessible from your computer.

I have used it to test webhooks from different providers (like payment gateways). In your computer, you can run something like:

ultrahook <subdomain> http://localhost:8000/webhook/

and then configure the webhook URL in your external service to something like <subdomain>.ultrahook.com

julianm
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My question is if this is possible to be done using a localhost url at all.

No, of course it isn’t – because what such a “callback” actually means, is that Facebook makes a request to your server – and that is hardly possible with localhost.

A valid SSL certificate for your website is easy to get for free these days, via LetsEncrypt. And even if that is not available on your server, there’s still StartSSL, that provide basic certificates for free. All you need is a server you can install them on, or upload them to, or whatever mechanism your hoster provides for it. (And if they don’t provide any, then it might be time to switch.)

CBroe
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  • Thank you for your answer, i asked this because there are some options that allow you to use localhost as a url in some facebook apps. But as you said it's impossible. Thank you for your time. – Query Apr 12 '16 at 21:16
  • Yes, you can test f.e. Facebook login with localhost – but that’s because all the stuff happens in your browser, it is just a redirect to Facebook and from there back to your localhost. And your browser knows what localhost is and how to reach it, so there’s no problem here – but Facebook doesn’t. (Or you could say they of course know as well – but if Facebook’s server makes a request to 127.0.0.1, that won’t achieve much.) – CBroe Apr 12 '16 at 21:27