How this developer built a Slack bot to help him find an apartment in San Francisco

Someday, sooner than you think, chatbots will be deployed to help us with mundane tasks. My daughter, who just got married this past June, could have used one to help her find the best deals on a wedding dress. As I mentioned recently, a college campus chatbot could greet new parents and direct them around campus. (When I asked if anyone would build this bot, several developers took up the call. Stay tuned for the results.) There could be a chatbot for just about any purpose, as someone has now proven.

Vik Paruchuri is the CEO of Dataquest, a service that helps you learn how to become a data scientist. In one of the most complete and detailed posts I’ve seen on chatbots, Paruchuri explained recently how he made a Slack bot to help him find an apartment in San Francisco. The bot has some cool features, including the ability to notify him about Craigslist postings, filter search results related to location and mass transit, and even collaborate on listings with other users, and rate those listings.

Paruchuri does more than explain his bot. He shares the code snippets, which is a good place to start if you want to build your own bot.

Check out the full post right here.