Important Changes for Kik Bot Developers: Bots In Groups

BOTS WILL NO LONGER BE PERMITTED TO REPEAT A USER’S KIK ID IN CHAT MESSAGES IN PUBLIC GROUPS.   

Overview

We’re making changes to our public groups to improve privacy for our users. Public groups will no longer present a user’s Kik id to other users- and for bots it will provide an alias id instead.

In order to keep things safe, simple, consistent for our users, and to keep the requirements for bots straight forward, we will no longer allow a bot to repeat a user’s kik id in a chat.

Bots that wish to address a particular user will still be permitted to use the user’s display name.

Example Code

You can obtain the user’s display name (and their profile photo) using the User Profile service.  The user profile service accepts a simple GET request:

curl \
   -u "<username>:<api_key>" \
   -X "GET" \
   https://api.kik.com/v1/user/laura

For Example:

curl -u "yourawesomekikchatbot:defb11e1-c503-490e-9da9-6a4b2f78d65d" -X "GET" https://api.kik.com/v1/user/akikusername

You’ll receive different values depending on if your bot is in a public group or in a private conversation.

Example Output - Private Groups & 1:1 Conversations:

In private groups and 1:1 conversations, you’ll get back the following information.

{

 "timezone": "America/Toronto",

 "firstName": "John",

 "lastName": "Doe",

 "profilePicLastModified": 1518730452477,

 "profilePicUrl": "https://cdn.kik.com/user/pic/akikusername/big"

}

Example Output - Public Groups

However, in public groups - the data returned will be as follows:

{

 "timezone": null,

 "firstName": "John",

 "lastName": "Doe",

 "profilePicLastModified": null,

 "profilePicUrl": null

}

Again- in public groups, you will only be presented with the user’s first and last name (which is made up of their “Display Name”)

Definition of the fields

Field	Description
firstName	The user's first name.
lastName	The user's last name.
profilePicUrl	A URL pointing to the profile image of the user. Will be null if the user has not set a profile picture.
profilePicLastModified	The epoch timestamp (in milliseconds) indicating when the profile picture was last changed. Will be null if the user has not set a profile picture.
timezone	The user's IANA timezone name. Will be null if the user's timezone is unknown.

 

API Docs & More Information

For additional information, please see the API documentation located at: https://dev.kik.com/#/docs/messaging#user-profiles

Feel free to reach out to use at [email protected] should you have any additional questions.  

Thanks!

The Bot Support Team