Facebook Messenger Chatbot how do I collect the users geo location that they send?

Question

In Facebook Messenger there is an icon allowing the user to send their geo coordinates.

Is this available on the Facebook Messenger platform yet i.e. if a user sends me their location does my Chatbot have access to it? If so how is it done because i can't see it in the response in my webhook.

Answer 1

You get the location as attachment in message. See sample below:

{ mid: 'mid.1463464074086:96b149e1a047e47842',
  seq: 2076,
  attachments: 
    [ { title: 'Anupam\'s Location',
   url: 'https://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bing.com%2Fmaps%2Fdefault.aspx%3Fv%3D2%26pc%3DFACEBK%26mid%3D8100%26where1%3D19.120002%252C%2B72.863715%26FORM%3DFBKPL1%26mkt%3Den-US&h=AAQH523sr&s=1&enc=AZNmEBjv3zHHm0_dYnEIC6j7EDsJNt8PZRZZyaXbIZ6VzjPsQUOOaMIPGtXFH17CevUiNK0_K594CgDQHAMQSru7uS_jjbkxojBWNwBnncqzaw',
   type: 'location',
   payload: [Object] } ] }

From the payload, you can access the Latitude and Longitude using:

lat = event.message.attachments[0].payload.coordinates.lat
lng = event.message.attachments[0].payload.coordinates.long

Answer 2

Yes, the location will be sent as an attachment in the message. If you are referring to the example code given in the facebook messenger platform documentation the fix can be done as follows....(please refer the complete code here https://developers.facebook.com/docs/messenger-platform/quickstart)

in the else section

else if (messageAttachments) {

              console.log(messageAttachments[0].payload.coordinates.lat); //gives you lat

              console.log(messageAttachments[0].payload.coordinates.long); // gives you long
           }

Answer 3

There is a bug for now about getting some of users' location.

When my users share their location in facebook-messenger-bot;

While I can get the location of users like below response;

    { mid: 'mid.1463464074086:96b149e1a047e47842',
      seq: 2076,
      attachments: 
        [ { title: 'Fatih\'s Location',
       url: 'https://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bing.com%2Fmaps%..',
       type: 'location',
       payload: [Object] 
    } ] }

But can't get the location of some other users like below response;

   { 
    { mid: 'mid.$cAAD53Ka90kBmfY23q1gTEdy6rrmW', seq: 19104}
   }

Facebook Team still working on this bug, this is the link if you want to browse: https://developers.facebook.com/bugs/160926314660178/