Adaptive cards are converted to image in Facebook Messenger - adaptive-cards

Question

I tried following example card picked up from Microsoft's website adaptivecards.io
var msg = new builder.Message(session)
.addAttachment({
contentType: "application/vnd.microsoft.card.adaptive",
content: {
type: "AdaptiveCard",
speak: "<s>Your meeting about \"Adaptive Card design session\"<break strength='weak'/> is starting at 12:30pm</s><s>Do you want to snooze <break strength='weak'/> or do you want to send a late notification to the attendees?</s>",
            "body": [
{
"type": "Container",
"items": [
{
"type": "TextBlock",
"text": "Publish Adaptive Card schema",
"weight": "bolder",
"size": "medium"
},
{
"type": "ColumnSet",
"columns": [
{
"type": "Column",
"width": "auto",
"items": [
{
"type": "Image",
"url": "https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/3647943215/d7f12830b3c17a5a9e4afcc370e3a37e_400x400.jpeg",
"size": "small",
"style": "person"
}
]
},
{
"type": "Column",
"width": "stretch",
"items": [
{
"type": "TextBlock",
"text": "Matt Hidinger",
"weight": "bolder",
"wrap": true
},
{
"type": "TextBlock",
"spacing": "none",
"text": "Created {{DATE(2017-02-14T06:08:39Z,SHORT)}}",
"isSubtle": true,
"wrap": true
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"type": "Container",
"items": [
{
"type": "TextBlock",
"text": "Now that we have defined the main rules and features of the format, we need to produce a schema and publish it to GitHub. The schema will be the starting point of our reference documentation.",
"wrap": true
},
{
"type": "FactSet",
"facts": [
{
"title": "Board:",
"value": "Adaptive Card"
},
{
"title": "List:",
"value": "Backlog"
},
{
"title": "Assigned to:",
"value": "Matt Hidinger"
},
{
"title": "Due date:",
"value": "Not set"
}
]
}
]
}
],
"actions": [
{
"type": "Action.ShowCard",
"title": "Set due date",
"card": {
"type": "AdaptiveCard",
"body": [
{
"type": "Input.Date",
"id": "dueDate",
"title": "Select due date"
}
],
"actions": [
{
"type": "Action.Submit",
"title": "OK"
}
]
}
},
{
"type": "Action.ShowCard",
"title": "Comment",
"card": {
"type": "AdaptiveCard",
"body": [
{
"type": "Input.Text",
"id": "comment",
"isMultiline": true,
"placeholder": "Enter your comment"
}
],
"actions": [
{
"type": "Action.Submit",
"title": "OK"
}
]
}
},
{
"type": "Action.OpenUrl",
"title": "View",
"url": "http://adaptivecards.io"
}
]
}
});
session.send("This is an adaptive card");
session.send(msg);
to see how it appears in Facebook and WebChat.
In WebChat emulator it renderes fine with options to interact with choices.
However, same thing renders as an image in Facebook Messenger, with one separate messsage to view options, which redirects to the website.
Should we assume that adaptive cards will not work on Facebook messenger? Or am I missing something basic here.

Answer 1

Unless Messenger natively supports adaptive cards, the best we can do is render to an image and attempt to map Actions to Messenger buttons. For example, an Action.OpenUrl should render as a button on Messenger. But more advanced scenarios, like input fields, etc, will get dropped as there is no way to express those as Messenger templates today.
This documentation lists the channels and their current support:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/adaptive-cards/get-started/bots#channel-status