LINE Episode I: A New Hope

If you are a core pythonic programmer, you can jump into writing the code right away! But if you are not familiar with Python, you should read this tutorial first before proceeding to the more details of line. Now, this manual will git you a quick introduction on how you can send a message and do other things with line

Part 1: Login and Pin authentication

Let’s start with login to LINE and pass through a pin authentication.

>>> from line import LineClient
>>> client = LineClient("carpedm20@gmail.com", "xxxxxxxxxx")
Enter PinCode '7390' to your mobile phone in 2 minutes
>>> client = LineClient("carpedm20", "xxxxxxxxxx")
Enter PinCode '9779' to your mobile phone in 2 minutes

Warning

You will failed to login because of the request of LINE corporation. (I have to remove some codes) However, you can use this library by login with authToken. The instruction about authToken login is explained in bellow paragraphs.

As you can see, you can login by making a LineClient instance and pass your email and password as parameters. If you have a NAVER account and link it to LINE account, you can login with your NAVER account!

Then, you will see a PinCode which you have to put in to your mobile phone to authenticate your LineClinet instance as a desktop Line client. This number will be expired in 2 minutes, so don’t be lazy!

If you enter your Pincode to your mobile phone, now you can see your authToken which will notify your LINE session.

>>> authToken = client.authToken
>>> print authToken
DJg5VZTBdkjMCQOeodf4.9guiWkX1koTnwiGNVkacva.49blBzv5W9ex/2M06QQofByLxigMCAnnGfmTOAgY3wo=

With this authToken, you don’t have to enter Pincode when you create a new LineClient instance!

>>> client = LineClient(authToken=authToken)

You can save your authToken in cache like redis or something else!

Note

If the client will be expired after a specific time (I couldn’t find a exact time yet), so you have to get a new authToken after it is expired.

Part 2: Profile and Contacts

Now, let’s see your profile to check whether PinCode authentication was successful or not.

>> profile = client.profile
>> print profile
<LineContact 김태훈>

You might want to send any message to your friend that you have succeeded to login to LINE! But you have to choose which one to send a message.

>>> print client.contacts  # your friends
[<LineContact 파랑봇> <LineContact 검정봇>]

Then, choose anyone to send a hello world message, and send it away!

>>> friend = client.contacts[0]
>>> friend.sendMessage("hello world!")
True

If you want to send an image, you can use sendImage() with specific path for image

>>> friend.sendImage("./image.jpg") # use your path for image to send
True

Or you can use an URL for image to send any image to your friends with sendImageWithURL()!

>>> friend.sendImageWithURL("https://avatars3.githubusercontent.com/u/3346407?v=3&s=460")
True

If you want to send a sticker (which is one of the most fun features of LINE!)

>>> friend.sendSticker() # send a default sticker
True
>>> friend.sendSticker(stickerId="13",stickerPackageId="1",stickerVersion="100")
True

If you see True message, then it means message is successfully sended to your friend. If you want to receive 10 recent messages:

>>> messages = friend.getRecentMessages(count=10)
>>> print messages
[LineMessage (contentType=NONE, sender=None, receiver=<LineContact 파랑봇>, msg="hello World!")]

I just make a one conversation with 파랑봇 so I only get one message with getRecentMessages method.

Part 3: Rooms and Groups

There are two type of chat rooms in LINE, one is just a room with multiple users, and the other is group which have more features then room. For examle, group has its own name but room don’t have any room for itself.

Now let’s see a list of group and room you are participated in.

>>> print client.groups
[<LineGroup 하트 #4>, <LineGroup 검정 #1 (invited)>]
>>> print client.rooms
<LineRoom [<LineContact 파랑봇>]>, <LineRoom [<LineContact 파랑봇>, <LineContact 검정봇>]>]

In the case of client.groups you can see a word (invited) and this represent that you are invited to a group but you didn’t accep the invitation yet. ‘#{number}’ means the number of members in the specific group. If you want to accept it:

>>> group = client.groups[1]
>>> group.acceptGroupInvitation()
True

Other methods are same as the case of contact like if you want to get a list of recent messages, use getRecentMessages method:

>>> messages = client.contacts[0].getRecentMessages(count=10)
>>> messages = client.groups[0].getRecentMessages(count=15)

If you have too much groups and want to find a specific group with its name:

>>> group = client.getGroupByName('GROUP_NAME')
>>> contact = client.getContactByName('CONTACT_NAME')

There are other methods in contact, rooms and group instances so I’ll recommend you to take a look at the models section.

Part 4: Make your own bot

So, most of you may want to use line to make your LINE bot. I also started this project to make a bot, so let’s talk about how to make our own bot. Below code is a basic structure of a LINE bot:

from line import LineClient, LineGroup, LineContact

try:
   client = LineClient("ID", "PASSWORD")
   #client = LineClient(authToken="AUTHTOKEN")
except:
   print "Login Failed"

while True:
   op_list = []

   for op in client.longPoll():
      op_list.append(op)

   for op in op_list:
      sender   = op[0]
      receiver = op[1]
      message  = op[2]

      msg = message.text
      receiver.sendMessage("[%s] %s" % (sender.name, msg))

One of the most important line is #12, and you might notice there is a new method named longPoll. This method pull a list of operations which should be handled by our LINE bot. There are various type of operations, but our interest might be RECEIVE_MESSAGE operation. This operation contain a new message sent by other contact, room or group. So we can get a received message and its sender by

sender   = op[0]
receiver = op[1]
message  = op[2]