Skip to main content

Case Study: Building a Serverless Messenger Chatbot

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Current Trends in Web Engineering (ICWE 2017)

Abstract

Major chat platforms, such as Facebook Messenger, have recently added support for chatbots, thus making chatbots more accessible for the end users. This paper presents a case study on building and designing a Messenger chatbot for a media company. The chatbot uses a Serverless Microservice architecture which was implemented using Amazon Web Services (AWS) including API Gateway, Lambda, DynamoDB, SNS and CloudWatch. The paper presents the architecture and reports the findings regarding the design and the final implementation. These findings are also compared to other recent studies around the same emerging topic.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Amazon API Gateway. https://aws.amazon.com/api-gateway/. Accessed 9 April 2017

  2. Amazon Cloudwatch. https://aws.amazon.com/cloudwatch/. Accessed 9 April 2017

  3. Amazon DynamoDB. https://aws.amazon.com/dynamodb/. Accessed 9 April 2017

  4. Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS). https://aws.amazon.com/sns/. Accessed 10 April 2017

  5. Amazon Web Services. https://aws.amazon.com/. Accessed 5 April 2017

  6. AWS lambda. https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/. Accessed 10 April 2017

  7. Facebook Messenger Platform. https://messengerplatform.fb.com/. Accessed 5 April 2017

  8. The Serverless Application Framework. https://serverless.com/. Accessed 5 April 2017

  9. Eivy, A.: Be wary of the economics of “serverless” cloud computing. IEEE Cloud Comput. 4(2), 6–12 (2017)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Hendrickson, S., Sturdevant, S., Harter, T., Venkataramani, V., Arpaci-Dusseau, A.C., Arpaci-Dusseau, R.H.: Serverless computation with openLambda. In: Proceedings of the 8th USENIX Conference on Hot Topics in Cloud Computing, HotCloud 2016, pp. 33–39, Berkeley. USENIX Association (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Pautasso, C., Zimmermann, O., Amundsen, M., Lewis, J., Josuttis, N.: Microservices in practice, part 1: reality check and service design. IEEE Softw. 34(1), 91–98 (2017)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Pautasso, C., Zimmermann, O., Amundsen, M., Lewis, J., Josuttis, N.: Microservices in practice, part 2: service integration and sustainability. IEEE Softw. 34(2), 97–104 (2017)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Roberts, M.: Serverless Architectures. https://martinfowler.com/articles/serverless.html. Accessed 9 April 2017

  14. Taivalsaari, A., Mikkonen, T., Systä, K.: Liquid software manifesto: The era of multiple device ownership and its implications for software architecture. In: 2014 IEEE 38th Annual Computer Software and Applications Conference, pp. 338–343, July 2014

    Google Scholar 

  15. Thönes, J.: Microservices. IEEE Softw. 32(1), 116–116 (2015)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Villamizar, M., Garces, O., Ochoa, L., Castro, H.E., Salamanca, L., Verano, M., Casallas, R., Gil, S., Valencia, C., Zambrano, A., Lang, M.: Infrastructure cost comparison of running web applications in the cloud using AWS Lambda and monolithic and microservice architectures. In: 2016 16th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Cluster, Cloud and Grid Computing (CCGrid) (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Yan, M., Castro, P., Cheng, P., Ishakian, V.: Building a chatbot with serverless computing. In: Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Mashups of Things and APIs, p. 5. ACM (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Yao, M.: Does conversation hurt or help the Chatbot Ux? Smashing Magazine, Nov 2016

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

The research was supported by the Academy of Finland (project 295913).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jyri Lehvä .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Lehvä, J., Mäkitalo, N., Mikkonen, T. (2018). Case Study: Building a Serverless Messenger Chatbot. In: Garrigós, I., Wimmer, M. (eds) Current Trends in Web Engineering. ICWE 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10544. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74433-9_6

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74433-9_6

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-74432-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-74433-9

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics