Build a Simple Chatbot with Python

Level 2: Intermediate

Nov 06, 2024

Project Level 2: Intermediate

This project is designed for intermediate learners who know Python fundamentals and are practicing building complete programs.

Project Objective

Create a basic chatbot that can respond to a limited set of questions or keywords. This chatbot will analyze user input and give predefined responses based on keywords it detects.

Learning Benefits

In this project, you will enhance your understanding of control flow and data structures by creating a chatbot that uses dictionaries for keyword-response mapping. This will also give you hands-on experience with user input handling and string manipulation.

How the Program Works

The program starts by greeting the user, and letting them know they can type “bye” to exit the program.

The user can ask simple questions such as “what’s the time” or “what is Python” and the chatbot responds. The answers are fetched from a Python dictionary inside the script:

# Define some responses for keywords
responses = {
    "hello": "Hello! How can I help you today?",
    "hi": "Hi there! What’s on your mind?",
    "weather": "I'm not sure about the weather, but it’s always a good day to code!",
    "time": f"The current time is {datetime.datetime.now().strftime('%H:%M')}.",
    "day": f"Today is {datetime.datetime.now().strftime('%A')}.",
    "python": "Python is a versatile programming language, great for web development, data science, and more.",
    "bye": "Bye! Have a great day!",
}

You can start with the above dictionary and implement the rest of the program.

Prerequisites

Required Libraries: datetime
There is no need to install any libraries since the above libraries are standard libraries.
Required Files: No files are required.
IDE: You can use any IDE on your computer to code the project.

Danger Zone

Once you code the project, compare it with our solution below:

Show Code