I am developing a Google Actions project for Google Home using api.ai.
Is it possible to pass a state parameter as part of the response to api.ai and have it included in the next request?
The Amazon Alexa API handles such a flow and it came in handy.
Thanks
EDIT:
I did not mention this before: I have api.ai sending requests to a webhook after google assistant triggers my intents. The response api.ai expects is defined here. I've tried including extra fields in the response but these are not included in any future intent requests from api.ai. I've also tried adding fields and values to the google specific portion of the response (defined here) to no avail.
As an example of what I am interested in, when responding to Alexa requests we can include a json field "sessionAttributes" which are then passed by Amazon in any future requests that are part of that interaction.
In this instance I query a database key on the first intent (which is subsequently used to pull a record) and pass that key in sessionAttributes to avoid performing that lookup for every intent request I receive.
The equivalent that you are looking for to sessionAttributes in Alexa dev depends on whether you are using an API.ai webhook or a conversation webhook. Reference this doc for more info on the differences.
Since you are using API.ai, assuming you are using the Node.js client library, use the snippet below. 'Contexts' can store data, not just serve as a flag of sorts to establish where you are in a conversation. Call setContext just before you call 'ask' and close out your webhook fulfillment.
app.setContext('<context name>', <lifespan of context>, <JSON to store>)
Then for the next round of fulfillment, retrieve the JSON from the parameters object within the Context. Get it with:
var myContext = app.getContext('<context name>')
Reference the examples in these docs for more info.
You could create an optional parameter in API.ai to catch/store this value and append any message being sent to API.ai with a marker and then the database value you want to cache, so API.ai recognizes from the marker the value to be cached as the parameter, and this would be passed back out of API.ai as well, so if you needed to chain/loop this, on your side you again just check if it has the special 'append' parameter value to append that to the next user message.
That being said, contexts can likely achieve the same end-goal you are trying to achieve in a much more straightforward fashion
Related
I am using an exteranl API that do some work for 15min, when it finish it will call any URL you define in your initial request to send the results to.
Is it possible for dialogFlow to accept this result in 15min? Is there like a built-in async response handler in DialogFlow?
If you are calling external APIs via webhook, it would be subject to the maximum webhook timeout limit of 30 seconds. After the response timeout is exceeded, Dialogflow invokes a webhook error or timeout built-in event and continues processing as usual. Therefore, Dialogflow would no longer accept webhook responses more than the set timeout limit.
Note that conversational interfaces are meant to be designed as a continuous message exchange between the end user and the app/bot. If your web service requires more time for executing operations in the background and this cannot be optimized, consider redesigning the conversation flow in such a way that end users don't wait for the app/bot to reply for more than the set webhook timeout limit.
If you have your own custom application (integrated using APIs or Client Libraries), you can instead call/invoke the function that needs 15 minutes of work (let’s call this function_1) from your custom application.
Here’s a basic setup:
User enters a query from the interface of your custom application.
Your custom application sends the user query with the Detect Intent
request to the Dialogflow agent (using APIs or Client Libraries).
After your custom application receives a Detect Intent response from
the agent, you can create code to get the intent name or event name
from the detectIntentResponse.queryResult.match.intent.displayName
or match.event response json respectively and then call/invoke
function_1 based on the intent or event matched.
Once function_1 is finished processing, you can either send a direct response to the
user in your custom application’s interface or send a Detect Intent
request to your agent so it matches an Intent and sends the intent
response back to your custom application.
No, it won't be possible as you describe it. The only way to call external services is through webhooks, but these are thought as calls that return a very specific object which Dialogflow then returns as an answer to the user directly, so they are inherently synchronous.
What you could do instead is think of a workaround. I don't know the specific of what service you're calling, but you could set up a small server to handle the webhook response from dialogflow which doesn't do anything except trigger the call to the external api, and when you get the answer you could process it (put the relevant content inside a "fulfilment" object as per Dialogflow specification) and trigger an event in your agent through the dialogflow API.
so the final process could look something like this.
user asks for e.g. "pizza": the right intent is triggered and the route for that intent calls a webhook server
your webhook server receives the call from dialogflow and calls the external api asking for the list of all pizzas ever created. it returns an empty fulfilment to the server
when the webhook server receives the response after 15 mins it triggers an event in the agent (look into the dialogflow api for your programming language of choice: python, node, java) and injects some parameters in the request, which you can then use to form a sentence in the agent
when I was just starting out I found this very useful to get a grasp of what the platform expects you to do in terms of interacting with external services, take a look at the graph especially which I think makes it clearer
I am trying to send messages from several outer sources to a specific channel, which is private and belongs to myself only. The username should be the name of source, not my ID.
I found there are two ways to do such a similar function: Incoming Webhooks and chat.postMessage
I have already practiced these two, which seems no difference between them.
However, in Incoming Webhooks, a statement says:
You can't use Incoming Webhooks with Workspace Apps right now; those
apps can request single channel write access and then use
chat.postMessage in the Web API to post messages, providing very
similar functionality to Incoming Webhooks.
What does it mean?
To my work, which one is better?
with chat.postMessage() you send a message to a specific channel, often you do that in response to a users action. You will need the token to verify the postMessage Request which you receive when the user installs your app.
Incoming webhooks are often used to post general information, e.g. patch notes or general announcements.
As far as I know, you don't need the token since there is a verification behind that Url.
so the webhook url is bound to a specific channel, which is specified through the user. With chat.postMessage you can post messages anywhere (depending on your permissions, maybe not in private channels or direct messages)
Adding to what Ben said:
Incoming webhooks are limited in their functionality. They are great if you need an easy way to send a message that does not require a token, but in general the API method (chat.postMessage) is the better choice. It is more flexible (e.g. not fixed to one channel) and provides the full functionality (e.g. you get the ID for a message and can later update it).
Workspace apps / tokens where a new functionality that allowed apps to be installed in one channel only (among other things). It never left its beta stage and can be safely ignore for further development.
Let suppose the following simple UC based on a CQRS architecture:
We have a backend managing a Business Object, let says a Movie.
This backend is composed of 2 Microservices: a CommandManager (Create/Update/Delete Movie) and a QueryManager (Query Movie)
We have a frontend that offer a web page for creating a new Movie and this action lead automatically to another web page describing the Movie.
A simple way to do that is:
A web page collect movie information using a form and send them to the frontend.
The frontend make a POST request to the CommandManager
The CommandManager write the new movies to the datastore and return the movie key
The frontend make a GET using this key to the QueryManager
The QueryManager looks for the Movie in the Datastore using the key and return it.
The frontend deliver the page with the Movie Information.
Ok, now I want to transform this UC in a more Event Driven way. Here is the new flow:
A web page collect movie information using a form and send them to the frontend.
The frontend write a Message in the BUS with the new movie information
The CommandManager listen the BUS and create the new movies in the datastore. Eventually, it publish a new message in the BUS specifying that a new Movie has been created.
At this point, the frontend is no more waiting for a response due to the fact that this kind of flow is asynchronous. How could we complete this flow in order to forward the user to the Movie Information Web page? We should wait that the creation process is done before querying the QueryManager.
In a more general term, in a asynchronous architecture based on bus/event, how to execute Query used to provide information in a web page?
In addition to #VoiceOfUnreason's answer,
If the two microservices are RESTFul, the CommandManager could return a 202 Accepted with a link pointing to the resource that will be created in the future. The client could then poll that resource until the server responds with a 200 OK.
Another solution would be that the CommandManager would return a 202 Accepted with a link pointing to a command/status endpoint. The client would poll that endpoint until the status is command-processed (including the URL to the the actual resource) or command-failed (including a descriptive message for the failure).
These solutions could be augmented by sending the status of all processed commands using Server Sent Events. In this way, the client gets notified without polling.
If the client is not aware that the architecture is asynchronous, a solution is to use an API gateway that blocks the client's request until the upstream microservice processes the command and then to respond with the complete resource's data.
At this point, the frontend is no more waiting for a response due to the fact that this kind of flow is asynchronous. How could we complete this flow in order to forward the user to the Movie Information Web page? We should wait that the creation process is done before querying the QueryManager.
Short answer: make the protocol explicit.
Longer answer: a good place to look for inspiration here is HTTP.
The front end makes a POST to the origin server; as a result the origin server places a message on the queue and sends a response back.
The representation sent with this response ought to describe the request's current status and point to (or embed) a status monitor that can provide the user with an estimate of when the request will be fulfilled.
The client can then poll the endpoint to find out what progress has been made.
For instance, the endpoint might be a query into the data store, that looks for evidence that the command manager has processed the original command; or it might be an endpoint that is watching the bus for the MovieCreated message, and changes its answer based on whether or not it has seen that.
It may help clarify things to look into idempotent request handling; when the Command Manager pulls a message off of its queue, how does it know if it has previously processed a copy of that message? Your polling endpoint should be able to use the same information to let the consumer know that the message has been successfully processed.
In addition to #Constantin Galbenu's answer, I would like to put in my two cents.
I would strongly advise you to look at a microservices pattern called "BFF" (Backend-For-Frontend) pattern. Instead of having a thick API gateway doing all the work, you can have an API per use-case. For Example: In your case, you can an API called "CreateMovieBFFHandler" which would receive the POST request from front-end and then this guy would coordinate with other things in the system like message queues, events etc. to track the status of the submitted request. UI might have a protocol with this BFFhandler that if the response doesn't come back in X seconds, then the front-end would consider it as failure and if this handler is able to get a successfully processed messaged from message queue or "MovieCreated" event for this key, then it could send a 200 OK back and then you can redirect the page to call write side and then populate the UI.
Useful Link: https://samnewman.io/patterns/architectural/bff/
I am creating a bot using MS Bot framework - NodeJs. The below information needs to be captured for logging (Using the bot.use method i.e. IMiddleware).
Receive:
a. UserId
b. UserInput (text)
c. ConversationId
Send:
1. Name of Intent or dialog name that handled this (that handled the user input text)
2. Bot output text
3. ConversationId
4. UserId
I am unable to get the required detail for the 'send'. Can anyone provide me some suggestions on this.
Thanks.
I believe your main struggle is to log the name of intent or dialog. You won't know it in your send middleware if you haven't captured it during the routing phase. Once the Bot Framework figured out where to send the incoming message, it just invokes that function.
These two articles may help you get what you want. Just recently I played with capturing the conversation's breadcrumbs and also logging a full transcript:
http://www.pveller.com/smarter-conversations-part-3-breadcrumbs/
http://www.pveller.com/smarter-conversations-part-4-transcript/
If you need to build a reliable capture engine, I would suggest that you didn't use the session.privateConversationData like I did and instead built your own storage/log infrastructure to push the events to. Just stream them out with a timestamp and conversationId and reconcile on the other end later. The asynchronous nature of everything the bot framework does internally will be haunting you along the way so that's why. Plus, once you scale out beyond testing on a few users and your bot spans multiple processes, you will be out of the single-threaded event loop.
I am looking for information on how to pass a custom variable (transaction_logID) to the square API and then have it returned back to me on the webhooks notification URL response.
How can i specifically link a "charge" event with a "notification" event so that I can update my personal SQL record with the transaction result? (Approved, Declined etc)
Thanks for your help.
Unfortunately passing in custom data and getting it back in a webhook isn't possible.
Depending on what exactly you want to link your notification to, you can look up the ID from the webhook in the v1 payments endpoints.