AI – C# – Chatbot With Built-in Responses

This is a simple chatbot with built-in responses, internal to the program. You will build its responses by adding more case statements. Tested in Visual Studio 2017.

using System;
using System.Threading;

namespace ChatterBot
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
bool shutdown = false;
bool foundResponse;
string inputValue;
string outputValue = "";
string ai_Name = "Hal";

Console.WriteLine(ai_Name + ": Hello");

while (!shutdown)
{
foundResponse = false;
Console.Write("User: ");
inputValue = Console.ReadLine().ToLower();

Console.Write(ai_Name + ": ");

// response data
switch (inputValue)
{
case "hello":
outputValue = "Hello to you! How are you?";
foundResponse = true;
break;
case "hi":
outputValue = "Hi to you! How are you?";
foundResponse = true;
break;
case "yo":
outputValue = "Yoooo to you! How are you?";
foundResponse = true;
break;
case "i'm good":
outputValue = "That's great. What's new?";
foundResponse = true;
break;
case "i am good":
outputValue = "That's great. What's new?";
foundResponse = true;
break;
case "exit":
Console.WriteLine("Good bye");
Thread.Sleep(3000);
//Console.ReadKey();
Environment.Exit(0);
break;
}

// if response is found
if (foundResponse)
{
Console.WriteLine(outputValue);
}
// if response is not found
else
{
Console.WriteLine("I do not understand. Can you please rephrase it?");
}

}
}
}
}

Notes

An even better approach would be to read a static (flat) text file. The text file would contain all your data. For example, the format of the text file would be: input, output—or, user_input, computer_response.

Once you’ve mastered that, move on to parsing user input into nouns and verbs, expanding contracted words, and providing timestamps to user input.