Working Chatbot – CodingNepal

How to Create Working Chatbot in HTML CSS and JavaScript

CodingNepal — Wed, 14 Jun 2023 11:42:10 +0000

You may have seen chatbots on multiple websites, as they are now essential components for modern websites and apps. If you are unfamiliar, a chatbot is a computer program that serves as a virtual assistant and is capable of understanding user queries and providing relevant responses.

Building a chatbot is a practical way for beginner web developers to gain hands-on experience with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, as these skills are crucial for creating real-world projects. So, in this blog post, I’ll guide you through creating a working chatbot using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript from scratch.

In this chatbot, users can ask any question and receive instant responses. This chatbot has an elegant and responsive user interface, ensuring a seamless experience across various devices. Keep in mind that to generate a response to the user query, this chatbot uses the OpenAI API, which is free.

Video Tutorial of Chatbot in HTML CSS & JavaScript

If you prefer learning through video tutorials, the provided video is an excellent resource for you to understand the process of creating your own functional chatbot. In the video, I explain each line of code and provide informative comments to make it beginner-friendly and easy to follow.

However, if you prefer reading blog posts or want a quick summary of the steps involved in creating this chatbot project, you can continue reading this post. By the end of this post, you will have your own chatbot that you can use to ask questions or integrate into your website or existing web projects.

Steps To Create Working Chatbot in HTML & JavaScript

To create your own working chatbot using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, follow these step-by-step instructions:

Create a folder. You can name this folder whatever you want, and inside this folder, create the mentioned files.
Create an index.html file. The file name must be index and its extension .html
Create a style.css file. The file name must be style and its extension .css
Create a script.js file. The file name must be script and its extension .js

To start, add the following HTML codes to your index.html file: This code snippet includes a chatbot header, a chatbox unordered list (ul), and an input field for user messages. By default, the chatbot will display a greeting message as the first chat “li”. We’ll use JavaScript later to dynamically add more chat “li” that contain chat details.




  
    
    Chatbot in JavaScript | CodingNepal
    
    
    
    
    
    
  
  
    
    
      
        Chatbot
        close
      
      
        
          smart_toy
          Hi there 
How can I help you today?
        
      
      
        
        send

Next, add the following CSS codes to your style.css file to apply visual styling to your chatbot. Now, if you load the web page in your browser, you will only see the chatbot toggle button at the bottom right corner. You can customize this code to your liking by adjusting the color, font, size, and other CSS properties.

/* Import Google font - Poppins */
@import url('https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Poppins:wght@400;500;600&display=swap');
* {
  margin: 0;
  padding: 0;
  box-sizing: border-box;
  font-family: "Poppins", sans-serif;
}
body {
  background: #E3F2FD;
}
.chatbot-toggler {
  position: fixed;
  bottom: 30px;
  right: 35px;
  outline: none;
  border: none;
  height: 50px;
  width: 50px;
  display: flex;
  cursor: pointer;
  align-items: center;
  justify-content: center;
  border-radius: 50%;
  background: #724ae8;
  transition: all 0.2s ease;
}
body.show-chatbot .chatbot-toggler {
  transform: rotate(90deg);
}
.chatbot-toggler span {
  color: #fff;
  position: absolute;
}
.chatbot-toggler span:last-child,
body.show-chatbot .chatbot-toggler span:first-child  {
  opacity: 0;
}
body.show-chatbot .chatbot-toggler span:last-child {
  opacity: 1;
}
.chatbot {
  position: fixed;
  right: 35px;
  bottom: 90px;
  width: 420px;
  background: #fff;
  border-radius: 15px;
  overflow: hidden;
  opacity: 0;
  pointer-events: none;
  transform: scale(0.5);
  transform-origin: bottom right;
  box-shadow: 0 0 128px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.1),
              0 32px 64px -48px rgba(0,0,0,0.5);
  transition: all 0.1s ease;
}
body.show-chatbot .chatbot {
  opacity: 1;
  pointer-events: auto;
  transform: scale(1);
}
.chatbot header {
  padding: 16px 0;
  position: relative;
  text-align: center;
  color: #fff;
  background: #724ae8;
  box-shadow: 0 2px 10px rgba(0,0,0,0.1);
}
.chatbot header span {
  position: absolute;
  right: 15px;
  top: 50%;
  display: none;
  cursor: pointer;
  transform: translateY(-50%);
}
header h2 {
  font-size: 1.4rem;
}
.chatbot .chatbox {
  overflow-y: auto;
  height: 510px;
  padding: 30px 20px 100px;
}
.chatbot :where(.chatbox, textarea)::-webkit-scrollbar {
  width: 6px;
}
.chatbot :where(.chatbox, textarea)::-webkit-scrollbar-track {
  background: #fff;
  border-radius: 25px;
}
.chatbot :where(.chatbox, textarea)::-webkit-scrollbar-thumb {
  background: #ccc;
  border-radius: 25px;
}
.chatbox .chat {
  display: flex;
  list-style: none;
}
.chatbox .outgoing {
  margin: 20px 0;
  justify-content: flex-end;
}
.chatbox .incoming span {
  width: 32px;
  height: 32px;
  color: #fff;
  cursor: default;
  text-align: center;
  line-height: 32px;
  align-self: flex-end;
  background: #724ae8;
  border-radius: 4px;
  margin: 0 10px 7px 0;
}
.chatbox .chat p {
  white-space: pre-wrap;
  padding: 12px 16px;
  border-radius: 10px 10px 0 10px;
  max-width: 75%;
  color: #fff;
  font-size: 0.95rem;
  background: #724ae8;
}
.chatbox .incoming p {
  border-radius: 10px 10px 10px 0;
}
.chatbox .chat p.error {
  color: #721c24;
  background: #f8d7da;
}
.chatbox .incoming p {
  color: #000;
  background: #f2f2f2;
}
.chatbot .chat-input {
  display: flex;
  gap: 5px;
  position: absolute;
  bottom: 0;
  width: 100%;
  background: #fff;
  padding: 3px 20px;
  border-top: 1px solid #ddd;
}
.chat-input textarea {
  height: 55px;
  width: 100%;
  border: none;
  outline: none;
  resize: none;
  max-height: 180px;
  padding: 15px 15px 15px 0;
  font-size: 0.95rem;
}
.chat-input span {
  align-self: flex-end;
  color: #724ae8;
  cursor: pointer;
  height: 55px;
  display: flex;
  align-items: center;
  visibility: hidden;
  font-size: 1.35rem;
}
.chat-input textarea:valid ~ span {
  visibility: visible;
}

@media (max-width: 490px) {
  .chatbot-toggler {
    right: 20px;
    bottom: 20px;
  }
  .chatbot {
    right: 0;
    bottom: 0;
    height: 100%;
    border-radius: 0;
    width: 100%;
  }
  .chatbot .chatbox {
    height: 90%;
    padding: 25px 15px 100px;
  }
  .chatbot .chat-input {
    padding: 5px 15px;
  }
  .chatbot header span {
    display: block;
  }
}

Finally, add the following JavaScript code to your script.js file: This script code will make your chatbot functional, which means now you can ask your questions, show or hide the chatbot by clicking the bottom right toggle button, and more.

const chatbotToggler = document.querySelector(".chatbot-toggler");
const closeBtn = document.querySelector(".close-btn");
const chatbox = document.querySelector(".chatbox");
const chatInput = document.querySelector(".chat-input textarea");
const sendChatBtn = document.querySelector(".chat-input span");

let userMessage = null; // Variable to store user's message
const API_KEY = "PASTE-YOUR-API-KEY"; // Paste your API key here
const inputInitHeight = chatInput.scrollHeight;

const createChatLi = (message, className) => {
    // Create a chat  element with passed message and className
    const chatLi = document.createElement("li");
    chatLi.classList.add("chat", `${className}`);
    let chatContent = className === "outgoing" ? `
` : `smart_toy`;
    chatLi.innerHTML = chatContent;
    chatLi.querySelector("p").textContent = message;
    return chatLi; // return chat 
 element
}

const generateResponse = (chatElement) => {
    const API_URL = "https://api.openai.com/v1/chat/completions";
    const messageElement = chatElement.querySelector("p");

    // Define the properties and message for the API request
    const requestOptions = {
        method: "POST",
        headers: {
            "Content-Type": "application/json",
            "Authorization": `Bearer ${API_KEY}`
        },
        body: JSON.stringify({
            model: "gpt-3.5-turbo",
            messages: [{role: "user", content: userMessage}],
        })
    }

    // Send POST request to API, get response and set the reponse as paragraph text
    fetch(API_URL, requestOptions).then(res => res.json()).then(data => {
        messageElement.textContent = data.choices[0].message.content.trim();
    }).catch(() => {
        messageElement.classList.add("error");
        messageElement.textContent = "Oops! Something went wrong. Please try again.";
    }).finally(() => chatbox.scrollTo(0, chatbox.scrollHeight));
}

const handleChat = () => {
    userMessage = chatInput.value.trim(); // Get user entered message and remove extra whitespace
    if(!userMessage) return;

    // Clear the input textarea and set its height to default
    chatInput.value = "";
    chatInput.style.height = `${inputInitHeight}px`;

    // Append the user's message to the chatbox
    chatbox.appendChild(createChatLi(userMessage, "outgoing"));
    chatbox.scrollTo(0, chatbox.scrollHeight);
    
    setTimeout(() => {
        // Display "Thinking..." message while waiting for the response
        const incomingChatLi = createChatLi("Thinking...", "incoming");
        chatbox.appendChild(incomingChatLi);
        chatbox.scrollTo(0, chatbox.scrollHeight);
        generateResponse(incomingChatLi);
    }, 600);
}

chatInput.addEventListener("input", () => {
    // Adjust the height of the input textarea based on its content
    chatInput.style.height = `${inputInitHeight}px`;
    chatInput.style.height = `${chatInput.scrollHeight}px`;
});

chatInput.addEventListener("keydown", (e) => {
    // If Enter key is pressed without Shift key and the window 
    // width is greater than 800px, handle the chat
    if(e.key === "Enter" && !e.shiftKey && window.innerWidth > 800) {
        e.preventDefault();
        handleChat();
    }
});

sendChatBtn.addEventListener("click", handleChat);
closeBtn.addEventListener("click", () => document.body.classList.remove("show-chatbot"));
chatbotToggler.addEventListener("click", () => document.body.classList.toggle("show-chatbot"));

Please note that your chatbot is currently unable to retrieve responses to your questions because you have not provided your API key in the AP_KEY variable. To get a free API key from OpenAI, sign up for an account at https://platform.openai.com/account/api-keys.

” Remember that when you sign up for OpenAI, you’ll get a free $5 credit for your API usage. If your account is older than 3 months or the credit runs out, you’ll need a paid account or create a new one with a new number to keep using the API. Your API usage and expiration date can be found on the account’s usage page.”

The above code provided follows a simple flow. First, it displays the user’s message in the chatbox and uses the OpenAI API to generate an appropriate response to the message. While waiting for the API response, a “Thinking…” message is shown. Once the response is received, it replaces the “Thinking…” message in the chatbox.

To understand codes better, I recommend watching the above tutorial video, reading the code comments, and experimenting with the code.

Conclusion and Final Words

In conclusion, creating a working chatbot allows you to apply your skills to a real-world application. I hope that by following the steps in this post, you’ve successfully created your own chatbot using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

To further improve your web development skills, you can try recreating the ChatGPT Clone Project using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. This project helps you expand your knowledge by creating a ChatGPT clone with additional features like dark/light themes and saved chats using local storage.

If you encounter any difficulties while creating your own Chatbot or your code is not working as expected, you can download the source code files for this Chatbot project for free by clicking the Download button. Remember that after downloading the file, you’ll have to paste an “OpenAI API key” into the API_KEY variable in the script.js file.

Simple Chatbot using PHP with MySQL & jQuery (Ajax)

CodingNepal — Sun, 20 Sep 2020 08:48:00 +0000

Hello readers, Today in this blog you’ll learn how to create a Simple Chatbot using PHP with MySQL & jQuery (Ajax). Earlier I shared a blog on how to Send Emails with PHP from Localhost using the XAMPP server and now it’s time to create a working chatbot in PHP.

A chatbot is a computer program designed to simulate human conversation. These chatbots reply to you instantly according to your queries because programmers have inserted thousands of inputs, replies, and queries into the database that can be asked by the user.

To make an advanced chatbot we’ve to code more and more but I tried to make a simple chatbot with a few lines of code and queries which help you to get an idea about how a chatbot actually works.

On the webpage for this chatbot, there is a chat form with an input field and a button labeled “send” for typing a message and sending it to the bot. If you ask the bot a question, and if the query exists in the database, the bot instantly replies with a message based on your query; if the query does not match any database queries, the bot replies with a message labeled “Sorry, we can’t understand you!”

In this chatting process, the webpage isn’t reloaded because I used jQuery (Ajax) for that. If you’re feeling difficult to understand what I am saying. You can watch a full video tutorial on this program [Simple Chatbot using PHP].

Video Tutorial of Simple Chatbot using PHP

In the video, you have seen how this chatbot looks and how it gives a reply according to the user query. If you know basic HTML, CSS, PHP & jQuery then you can easily understand the codes behind creating this chatbot. In this video, I have just made a chatbot form where chats are static but in part -2 of this video, I have done the PHP and jQuery codes of this program and made it dynamic.

In that part -2 video, to make this chatbot dynamic, I just created a database and a table in MySQL and inserted some queries and replies into it and with the help of PHP and Ajax, I retrieved the data (replies) in the chat form according to the user query.

Simple Chatbot using PHP with MySQL [Source Codes]

To create this program [Simple Chatbot using PHP]. First, you need to create three Files two PHP Files and another one CSS Files. After creating these files just paste the following codes in your file.

Remember that, if you’re going to download code files, you’ve to create a database name “bot”, and table name “chatbot”, and inside this table, you’ve to create three rows (id, queries, replies). Otherwise, you can replace the name of the database, table, and table rows with your database table details in my given files.

id type int(11) auto_increment
queries type varchar(300)
replies type varchar(300)

First, create a PHP file with the name bot.php and paste the given codes into your PHP file. Remember, you’ve to create a file with .php extension.





    
    
    Simple Chatbot in PHP | CodingNepal
    
    
    


    
        Simple Online Chatbot
        
            
                
                    
                
                
                    Hello there, how can I help you?

Second, create a CSS file with the name of style.css and paste the given codes in your CSS file. Remember, you’ve to create a file with .css extension.

@import url('https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Poppins:wght@200;300;400;500;600;700&display=swap');
*{
    margin: 0;
    padding: 0;
    box-sizing: border-box;
    font-family: 'Poppins', sans-serif;
}
html,body{
    display: grid;
    height: 100%;
    place-items: center;
}

::selection{
    color: #fff;
    background: #007bff;
}

::-webkit-scrollbar{
    width: 3px;
    border-radius: 25px;
}
::-webkit-scrollbar-track{
    background: #f1f1f1;
}
::-webkit-scrollbar-thumb{
    background: #ddd;
}
::-webkit-scrollbar-thumb:hover{
    background: #ccc;
}

.wrapper{
    width: 370px;
    background: #fff;
    border-radius: 5px;
    border: 1px solid lightgrey;
    border-top: 0px;
}
.wrapper .title{
    background: #007bff;
    color: #fff;
    font-size: 20px;
    font-weight: 500;
    line-height: 60px;
    text-align: center;
    border-bottom: 1px solid #006fe6;
    border-radius: 5px 5px 0 0;
}
.wrapper .form{
    padding: 20px 15px;
    min-height: 400px;
    max-height: 400px;
    overflow-y: auto;
}
.wrapper .form .inbox{
    width: 100%;
    display: flex;
    align-items: baseline;
}
.wrapper .form .user-inbox{
    justify-content: flex-end;
    margin: 13px 0;
}
.wrapper .form .inbox .icon{
    height: 40px;
    width: 40px;
    color: #fff;
    text-align: center;
    line-height: 40px;
    border-radius: 50%;
    font-size: 18px;
    background: #007bff;
}
.wrapper .form .inbox .msg-header{
    max-width: 53%;
    margin-left: 10px;
}
.form .inbox .msg-header p{
    color: #fff;
    background: #007bff;
    border-radius: 10px;
    padding: 8px 10px;
    font-size: 14px;
    word-break: break-all;
}
.form .user-inbox .msg-header p{
    color: #333;
    background: #efefef;
}
.wrapper .typing-field{
    display: flex;
    height: 60px;
    width: 100%;
    align-items: center;
    justify-content: space-evenly;
    background: #efefef;
    border-top: 1px solid #d9d9d9;
    border-radius: 0 0 5px 5px;
}
.wrapper .typing-field .input-data{
    height: 40px;
    width: 335px;
    position: relative;
}
.wrapper .typing-field .input-data input{
    height: 100%;
    width: 100%;
    outline: none;
    border: 1px solid transparent;
    padding: 0 80px 0 15px;
    border-radius: 3px;
    font-size: 15px;
    background: #fff;
    transition: all 0.3s ease;
}
.typing-field .input-data input:focus{
    border-color: rgba(0,123,255,0.8);
}
.input-data input::placeholder{
    color: #999999;
    transition: all 0.3s ease;
}
.input-data input:focus::placeholder{
    color: #bfbfbf;
}
.wrapper .typing-field .input-data button{
    position: absolute;
    right: 5px;
    top: 50%;
    height: 30px;
    width: 65px;
    color: #fff;
    font-size: 16px;
    cursor: pointer;
    outline: none;
    opacity: 0;
    pointer-events: none;
    border-radius: 3px;
    background: #007bff;
    border: 1px solid #007bff;
    transform: translateY(-50%);
    transition: all 0.3s ease;
}
.wrapper .typing-field .input-data input:valid ~ button{
    opacity: 1;
    pointer-events: auto;
}
.typing-field .input-data button:hover{
    background: #006fef;
}

Last, create a PHP file with the name message.php and paste the given codes into your PHP file. Remember, you’ve to create a file with .php extension.


 0){
    //fetching replay from the database according to the user query
    $fetch_data = mysqli_fetch_assoc($run_query);
    //storing replay to a varible which we'll send to ajax
    $replay = $fetch_data['replies'];
    echo $replay;
}else{
    echo "Sorry can't be able to understand you!";
}

?>

That’s all, now you’ve successfully created a Simple Chatbot using PHP with MySQL & jQuery (Ajax). If your code doesn’t work or you’ve faced any error/problem then please download the source code files from the given download button. It’s free and a .zip file will be downloaded then you’ve to extract it.