Creating a Basic Skill

We will create a basic skill that makes opsdroid respond to the text "how are you". This skill will be very similar to the hello skill found in the documentation. The video tutorial for creating your own skill is also available here.

If you need help or if you are unsure about something join our matrix channel and ask away! We are more than happy to help you.

The Skill folder

Opsdroid skills are located inside a folder with the name skill-<skillname>. Inside this folder you should have at least these files:

• LICENSE
• README.md
• __init__.py

You will write all of your python functions in the __init__.py file, but you can also include any other helpful files inside your skill folder.

Building the Skill

We are now ready to start writing the 'how are you' skill. We will be using opsdroid regex matcher to write our function. The first thing to do inside our __init__.py will be importing the Skill class from opsdroid to inherit from.

Importing the skill class

from opsdroid.skill import Skill

Importing Regex Matcher

We also need a matcher to use to connect a method of our skill class to a phrase or sentence that the user will say.

from opsdroid.matchers import match_regex

All the matchers available in opsdroid can be imported from opsdroid.matchers.

Decorators

A matcher is meant to be used as a function decorator. The decorator allows opsdroid to understand the function, so we need to use this decorator and use the regex, that we wish opsdroid to react to.

from opsdroid.skill import Skill
from opsdroid.matchers import match_regex

class MySkill(Skill):

    @match_regex('how are you?')

The regex matcher takes a regular expression and searches for it on every message sent by a user. So if the user types how are you? opsdroid will trigger the function underneath the match_regex decorator.

Note: Opsdroid won't trigger with the text how are you because the question mark is missing.

Functions

Skills in opsdroid are just Python methods on a class. As seen before, a decorator and a method together will allow opsdroid to do pretty much everything that you can imagine.

Let's write our function, so opsdroid knows what to trigger when a user writes the words how are you?

from opsdroid.skill import Skill
from opsdroid.matchers import match_regex

class MySkill(Skill):

    @match_regex('how are you?')
    async def how_are_you(self, message):
        pass

Opsdroid is build with asyncio. That means every function that you wish opsdroid to react to, should be an asynchronous function.

Note: that every function will take these two parameters: self, message.

Opsdroid Answer

So far our opsdroid can match something that a user said and can trigger a skill. But nothing will happen yet, let's make opsdroid answer to the text, with a message of its own.

from opsdroid.skill import Skill
from opsdroid.matchers import match_regex

class MySkill(Skill):

    @match_regex('how are you?')
    async def how_are_you(self, message):
        await message.respond('Good thanks! My load average is 0.2, 0.1, 0.1.')

Our skill is done and opsdroid will be able to respond like in the Opsdroid main page. The final thing left to do is to add the skill to the opsdroid configuration file.

Adding the Skill To Configuration

For the sake of simplicity we will assume the following:

• The configuration file is located at: ~/.opsdroid/configuration.yaml
• Your skill is located at: ~/documents/skill-howareyou

Open your configuration.yaml file and under the skills section, add the name and path of your skill:

skills:
  - name: how-are-you
    path: /Users/username/documents/skill-howareyou

As mentioned in the introduction, the indentation and the use of spaces instead of tabs is very important. If you have any issues when running opsdroid check both of these things; it might be a problem with a space.