Alice 0.2.0 Changes

tl;dr: Some breaking changes in this version

• better help text
• new format for writing handler functions
• more flexible reply function

New help text

Completely changes the way that help documentation is provided for handlers. Now you use Elixir's built-in documentation features to provide help text.

This allows for better formatting and better help information.

Changes to how handler functions are written (Breaking change)

Instead of writing a handle(conn, :name) function, you now write a name(conn) function

Together these two features look like this:

route ~r/\Aping\z/i, :ping
command ~r/\bping\z/i, :ping

@doc "`ping` - responds with signs of life"
def ping(conn) do
  ["PONG!", "Can I help you?", "Yes...I'm still here.", "I'm alive!"]
  |> random_reply(conn)
end

More flexible reply/2

The reply/2 function can now take its arguments in any order (reply(conn, text), or reply(text, conn)). This allows chaining on conn for sending multiple replies.

conn
|> reply("_Sure thing!_")
|> reply("_Commands require you @ mention me, Routes do not_")
|> reply("_Here are all the routes and commands I know about…_")

Of course, you can still call reply/2 in the original way by passing the text first.

"text" |> reply(conn)