POST body for sending a new messages with the Microsoft BotConnector

Question

The REST api details the JSON format of the POST body when sending a message, however it's not clear what goes in the fields. Here is the format ...

{
  "id": "string",                         // ?
  "conversationId": "string",             // Conversation ID
  "created": "2016-06-22T10:45:48.618Z",  // Current time?
  "from": "string",                       // Username?
  "text": "string",                       // The message to be sent
  "channelData": "string",                // ?
  "images": [
    "string"                              // Image URL?
  ],
  "attachments": [
    {
      "url": "string",                    // Attachment URL
      "contentType": "string"             // ContentType
    }
  ],
  "eTag": "string"                        // ?
}

I've flagged the field that I am unsure of. At the moment I send off the requests and get a 500 server error in return. The bot works locally fine using the local bot emulator.

This JSON needs to be built in an Android app.

EDIT: Here is the intercepted JSON and response I am sending

POST https://directline.botframework.com/api/conversations/D0I7X8284zv/messages HTTP/1.1
Host: directline.botframework.com
Connection: keep-alive
Content-Length: 239
Authorization: BotConnector Ve7jitnSIdE.dAA.RAAwAEkANwBYADgAMgA4ADQAegB2AA.Iy0ZhjLN0QE.e9o7v6n2Xz4.8C7zj2UlOP6202jMEpHqjXVfZxexO5JxzFE7VrRgaXg
Postman-Token: dd7b4c43-84ea-7c38-bd2c-681f6c031eb0
Cache-Control: no-cache
Origin: chrome-extension://aicmkgpgakddgnaphhhpliifpcfhicfo
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/51.0.2704.103 Safari/537.36
Content-Type: application/json
Accept: */*
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, br
Accept-Language: en-GB,en-US;q=0.8,en;q=0.6,fr;q=0.4
Cookie: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

{
  "id": "SomeId",
  "conversationId": "D0I7X8284zv",
  "created": "2016-06-23T09:05:06.718Z",
  "from": "someusername",
  "text": "annual leave",
  "channelData": "Conv1",
  "images": [],
  "attachments": [],
  "eTag": "blah"
}
HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error
Cache-Control: no-cache
Pragma: no-cache
Content-Length: 43
Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8
Expires: -1
Server: Microsoft-IIS/8.0
Set-Cookie: UserId=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX; path=/
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=31536000
Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2016 09:06:06 GMT

{
  "message": "failed to send message"
}

Answer 1

In the JSON, text is the message that user sends to bot. I got 500 error when I enable the web chat with direct line API. But it automatically solved after 5 or 6 hours.

By the way according the Microsoft help, They gave me these two options, Direct Line will return errors in two situations:

1. There is a problem with your message or an internal error in Direct Line
2. Your bot is returning an error message

As you mentioned, in emulator it works fine. so it is because of the message you are passing.

Message {
id (string, optional): ID for this message ,
conversationId (string, optional): Conversation ID for this message ,
created (string, optional): UTC timestamp when this message was created ,
from (string, optional): Identity of the sender of this message ,
text (string, optional): Text in this message ,
channelData (string, optional): Opaque block of data passed to/from bot via the ChannelData field ,
images (Array[string], optional): Array of URLs for images included in this message ,
attachments (Array[Attachment], optional): Array of non-image attachments included in this message ,
eTag (string, optional)
}
Attachment {
url (string, optional): URL for this attachment ,
contentType (string, optional): Content type for this attachment 
} 

Conversation {
conversationId (string, optional): ID for this conversation ,
token (string, optional): Token scoped to this conversation ,
eTag (string, optional)
} 

here with I share C# code, may be that will help you,

 private async Task<bool> PostMessage(string message)
        {

            client = new HttpClient();
            client.BaseAddress = new Uri("https://directline.botframework.com/api/conversations/");
            client.DefaultRequestHeaders.Accept.Clear();
            client.DefaultRequestHeaders.Accept.Add(new MediaTypeWithQualityHeaderValue("application/json"));
            client.DefaultRequestHeaders.Authorization = new AuthenticationHeaderValue("BotConnector", "[YOUR BOT TOKEN]");
            response = await client.GetAsync("/api/tokens/");
            if (response.IsSuccessStatusCode)
            {
                var conversation = new Conversation();
                response = await client.PostAsJsonAsync("/api/conversations/", conversation);
                if (response.IsSuccessStatusCode)
                {
                    Conversation ConversationInfo = response.Content.ReadAsAsync(typeof(Conversation)).Result as Conversation;
                    string conversationUrl = ConversationInfo.conversationId+"/messages/";
                    BotDirectLineApproch.Models.Message msg = new BotDirectLineApproch.Models.Message() { text = message };
                    response = await client.PostAsJsonAsync(conversationUrl,msg);
                    if (response.IsSuccessStatusCode)
                    {
                        response = await client.GetAsync(conversationUrl);
                        if (response.IsSuccessStatusCode)
                        {
                            MessageSet BotMessage = response.Content.ReadAsAsync(typeof(MessageSet)).Result as MessageSet;
                            ViewBag.Messages = BotMessage;
                            IsReplyReceived = true;
                        }
                    }
                }

            }
            return IsReplyReceived;
        }

And I created a class with same JSON as follows,

public class MessageSet
    {
        public Message[] messages { get; set; }
        public string watermark { get; set; }
        public string eTag { get; set; }
    }

    public class Message
    {
        public string id { get; set; }
        public string conversationId { get; set; }
        public DateTime created { get; set; }
        public string from { get; set; }
        public string text { get; set; }
        public string channelData { get; set; }
        public string[] images { get; set; }
        public Attachment[] attachments { get; set; }
        public string eTag { get; set; }
    }

    public class Attachment
    {
        public string url { get; set; }
        public string contentType { get; set; }
    }

And for the Conversation,

public class Conversation
    {
        public string conversationId { get; set; }
        public string token { get; set; }
        public string eTag { get; set; }
    }

I hope this answer will give you a help to solve your problem. Cheers!