Hello everyone,
i am working on an Alexa Skill at the moment and I have the problem, that I need to call a handler from another one.
I read several posts but there was no clear answer to my problem. I have a handler "AskForEmployeeInformation_Handler" which deals with several intents which answer several questions about a person. But if the user only says the surname or name instead of the full name then Alexa prompts out if there are persons which match to the given name. The user should now say one of the proposed names. While saying this name another handler "SetName_Handler" is called, which sets the chosen name as a session attribute. Now I want to call in the return statement the "AskForEmployeeInformation_Handler" again because it includes the whole logic to prompt out the wanted informations.
I saw some solutions to call the handler like you can see in the following code and the logic was executed but Alexa did not say anything and do not prompt the answer to the user.
Do you have an idea what I can do to solve the problem?
Thanks for your help.
const SetName_Handler = {
canHandle(handlerInput){
const request = handlerInput.requestEnvelope.request;
let sessionAttributes = handlerInput.attributesManager.getSessionAttributes();
return sessionAttributes.event === 'AskForEmployee_Name' || sessionAttributes.event === 'AskForPhoneNumber_Name' || sessionAttributes.event === 'AskForRole_Name';
},
handle(handlerInput) {
const request = handlerInput.requestEnvelope.request;
const responseBuilder = handlerInput.responseBuilder;
let sessionAttributes = handlerInput.attributesManager.getSessionAttributes();
let say = '';
let slotValues = getSlotValues(request.intent.slots);
console.log('***** slotValues: ' + JSON.stringify(slotValues, null, 2));
//save person for the session - maybe for further questions
sessionAttributes['employeeSurname'] = slotValues.employeeSurname.resolved;
sessionAttributes['employeeName'] = slotValues.employeeName.resolved;
handlerInput.attributesManager.setSessionAttributes(sessionAttributes);
return AskForEmployeeInformation_Handler.handle(handlerInput;
}
};
I think your best bet is to separate the logic out of your handlers. I have never seen the need to call another Intent's handle method from another, and I find that this would add complications and odd errors.
The flat IntentHandler way of doing things is a recipe for disaster once your skill needs to know about session states and context (for example, what the user was doing previous to this IntentHandler being invoked).
Instead, you might find the Dialog Interface way of confirming slots to be exactly what you are looking for: https://developer.amazon.com/en-US/docs/alexa/custom-skills/dialog-interface-reference.html
Check out this article for a good overview of why/how to manage state and context in Alexa apps: https://medium.com/hackernoon/lessons-learned-moving-from-web-to-voice-development-35daa1d301db
Related
Not sure how the create channel and create role isn't working inside the following code, towards the bottom. (EDIT: Nothing is sent to the console and nothing happens regardng the code. It is like it is entirely ignored.) This is a snippet from code that User A challenges User B. User B is messaged, alerting them that a challenge has been issued to them via a Private Message. If the challenge is accepted, I want the bot to 1)Make a role specifically for User A and User B named "User A vs User B" 2) take User A and User B and put them both into that new role and 3) Make a battlefield named "User A vs User B" inside a specific category inside the server the bot is on.
I am unsure if the problem lies in how the bot is trying to make the role and channel in a sever while the bot is talking to the user in a private message instead of on the server. I thought putting the "server" variable as the server ID would help but it doesn't seem to do anything after the accept message.
// Awaits reply from user
if (message.channel.id === '541736552582086656') return target.send("Do you accept the challenge? Please reply with 'accept' or 'deny'.")
.then((newmsg) => {
newmsg.channel.awaitMessages(response => response.content, {
max: 1,
time: 150000,
errors: ['time'],
}).then((collected) => {
// Grabs the first (and only) message from the collection.
const reply = collected.first();
if (reply.content === 'accept'){
reply.channel.send(`You have ***accepted *** the challenge from ${challenger}. Please wait while your battlefield is made...`);
message.author.send(`${target} has accepted your challenge! Please wait while the channel is made for your brawl...`)
/// Problems start here
function createChannel(message){
var server = "SERVER ID";
var name = `${target} vs ${challenger}`;
message.guild.createRole({
role: {
name: `${target} vs ${challenger}`,
color: "#00fffa",
permissions: [] }
}).then(role => {
target.addRole(role, name)
challenger.addRole(role, name)
.catch(error => client.catch(error))
}).catch(error => client.catch(error))
server.createChannel(Name, name).then(
(channel) => {
channel.setParent("CATEGORY ID")
})
} // problems end here
} else if (reply.content === 'deny') {
reply.channel.send("You have ***denied *** the challenge.")
} else {
reply.channel.send("Your response wasn't valid.");
}
})
})
}
I have been wondering if I need to go about making the channel and role in a different way since it is trying to be made from a private message and not inside the server..
Thanks for any and all help! I also apologize if I'm using stack overflow too much for problems like this... You guys are great at helping me see different ways to do things and what I'm doing wrong, so I am learning, but I don't want to feel like I'm abusing it too much.
I think the problem is the fact that you create a function called createChannel with the code to create a rol and channel, but you never call said function.
You can either call the function after you've declared it or (which is in my opinion better) you can remove the following lines
function createChannel(message){
} // problems end here
I am trying to build up a facebook messenger chatbot using Dialogflow. In the dialogflow fulfillment inline editor, I found that I can use agent.request_.body to get the body of the request. I assume "request_" is a property of WebhoodClient object? But I couldn't find any documentation elaborate that, could you please advise if my understanding is correct and where I can find the reference or documentation?
const agent = new WebhookClient({ request, response });
console.log(JSON.stringify(agent.request_.body));
Thanks
Google provides documentation for Dialogflow webhooks here, which include this sample webhook to inspect parameters and dynamically create slot filling prompts:
exports.dialogflowFirebaseFulfillment = functions.https.onRequest((request, response) => {
const agent = new WebhookClient({ request, response });
function flight(agent) {
const city = agent.parameters['geo-city'];
const time = agent.parameters['time'];
const gotCity = city.length > 0;
const gotTime = time.length > 0;
if(gotCity && gotTime) {
agent.add(`Nice, you want to fly to ${city} at ${time}.`);
} else if (gotCity && !gotTime) {
agent.add('Let me know which time you want to fly');
} else if (gotTime && !gotCity) {
agent.add('Let me know which city you want to fly to');
} else {
agent.add('Let me know which city and time you want to fly');
}
}
let intentMap = new Map();
intentMap.set('flight', flight);
agent.handleRequest(intentMap);
});
My guess would be to add
console.log(agent);
right before defining the flight function, then checking the logs to see which objects agent contains, then adding iterations of console.log(agent.fakeObjectName) until you find the information you're looking for.
If you're following the deployment process recommended in Actions on Google's Codelabs level 2, your logs will show up in the Firebase console, like this:
Hope that helps!
Just a note.
I had a code similar to this:
const city = agent.parameters['geo-city'];
There is an icon that suggest it's better written in dot notation.
that is gone after I changed it to:
const city = agent.parameters.geo-city;
OK, new to Node.js and botframework. I built first bot using Azure site and downloaded the code. Chose the Luis integrated bot template.
I understand (finally) the event driven model of node.js and the concept of callbacks.
I have the code snippet below. When Luis finds an intent of "Help" it triggers this function. In turn, I have database calls to lookup the entity. Within the database I have an entity, response (if entity is bottle, answer "Recycle").
I have that code working too.
Below the first block is a function handleHelpRequester which is the callback function, I have that working as well. Where I am a little stuck (best practice) is that in this callback function I want to send something to the session object (session.send toward the bottom of the function).
Since I don't create the session object (directly) I'm not sure on the options.
Should I pass the session object to the database function, then pass it back?
Should I create a global variable and set it to the session object (I'm concerned that if multiple people are using this bot then this approach won't work).
I'm open for suggestions.
Thanks
.matches('Help', (session, args) => {
var entities = args.entities;
var itype = builder.EntityRecognizer.findEntity(args.entities, 'ItemTypes');
var respondToUser = '';
var msg = 'Initialized';
// if there is an entity provided, perform a lookup of the entity.
if (itype.entity !== null) {
//Use session.sendTyping so the user thinks something is happening rather than being ignored while we do the lookup in SharePoint.
session.sendTyping();
//perform lookup
respondToUser = sp.lookupEntity(itype.entity, handleHelpRequest);
};
})
function handleHelpRequest(err, respondToUser) {
var msg = 'uninitialized';
if (err = 'success') {
console.log('Respond to user from matches:'.concat(respondToUser));
//return from lookup
if (respondToUser === 'No match found') {
msg = 'I think you are asking for help, but I don\'t understand what you need help with.';
}
else {
msg = 'I can help you with that, \'%s\'.', respondToUser;
}
console.log(msg);
session.send(msg);
//The following two lines are for debugging
session.send('How may I assist you? ' + JSON.stringify(args));
session.send('Value of entity you said: \'%s\'.', itype.entity);
}
else {
console.log('an error occurred');
}
}
If you want to have access to the session object, then pass it as a parameter to your helper function.
Example:
function handleHelpRequest(session, err, respondToUser) {
// do session stuff
}
I wonder how to catch a user reply to a specific chatbot question? I mean for example if the user asks the chatbot for the weather and the chatbot responds back by asking the user for in which city. I would then like to trace what the user responds to that question. So that the city could be used for calling a weather api for the city. I don't know how to track the user reply to that question. Does anyone know if and how this is possible?
So that multiple users can access the chatbot simultaneously, it's best to keep track of each user, and each user's conversation state. In the case of the Messenger API, this would be:
const users = {}
const nextStates = {
'What country are you in?': 'What city are you in?',
'What city are you in?': 'Let me look up the weather for that city...'
}
const receivedMessage = (event) => {
// keep track of each user by their senderId
const senderId = event.sender.id
if (!users[senderId].currentState){
// set the initial state
users[senderId].currentState = 'What country are you in?'
} else {
// store the answer and update the state
users[senderId][users[senderId].currentState] = event.message.text
users[senderId].currentState = nextStates[users[senderId.currentState]]
}
// send a message to the user via the Messenger API
sendTextMessage(senderId, users[senderId].currentState)
}
Then you will have the answer for each user stored in the users object. You can also use a database to store this.
..I solved it by setting a global variable when the chatbot asks the question
global.variable = 1;
When the user replies the incoming text message event is fired and I can check if the global flag is set. This indicates that this is the user reply after the question was asked. I can then get the message text city from that message. This works fine in my case but if anyone knows a better alternative please let me know
If my bot asks different questions and if the user answers each of them, how do I find out which answer relates to which question. There is a field called metadata that you can attach to the sendTextMessage API but when the user responds, this metadata comes in as undefined. Do you guys use any node-cache for tracking state or an FSM such as machina.js? How can I best figure out at what of the conversation we are currently stuck in?
When your app receives a message, there's no payload or metadata associated with it. This is as opposed to a quick-reply or post-back which can have a payload. The only way to associate a response with a question this is to manually track the conversation state in your app as suggested by #anshuman-dhamoon
To do this, it's best to maintain a state for each user, as well as the next state for each state.
// optionally store this in a database
const users = {}
// an object of state constants
const states = {
question1: 'question1',
question2: 'question2',
closing: 'closing',
}
// mapping of each to state to the message associated with each state
const messages = {
[states.question1]: 'How are you today?',
[states.question2]: 'Where are you from?',
[states.closing]: 'That\'s cool. It\'s nice to meet you!',
}
// mapping of each state to the next state
const nextStates = {
[states.question1]: states.question2,
[states.question2]: states.closing,
}
const receivedMessage = (event) => {
// keep track of each user by their senderId
const senderId = event.sender.id
if (!users[senderId].currentState){
// set the initial state
users[senderId].currentState = states.question1
} else {
// store the answer and update the state
users[senderId][users[senderId].currentState] = event.message.text
users[senderId].currentState = nextStates[users[senderId.currentState]]
}
// send a message to the user via the Messenger API
sendTextMessage(senderId, messages[users[senderId].currentState])
}
Note If you wanted, you can even make the values of nextStates into callable functions that take the answer of the current state and branch off into different conversation flows by passing the user to a different state depending on his/her response.
As per my knowledge,in Facebook chatbot you can send data from user to chatbot just by setting payload from postback buttons as they have given in API reference.
And chatbot won't store your session or any states/flags.you can set status or flags or arrays but all will be lost when you update your application or restart your server.
so,if you really want to set status you should use database for that.and senderID will remain same everytime so you can handle data from database by that particular id for particular user.
For more details checkout technical referance here.
I hope this will help you.if so,kindly mark it as an answer.
You can have a status code in your code, to keep track of where the user conversation with the bot is.
For eg. if you have 10 questions, keep statuscode = 0 initially, and ask the first question. When you receive a message to your webhook, check if statuscode==0, and store that user message as a response to your first question. Then increment statusCode=1 and ask the next question.
You can have multiple flags and statusCodes to deal with different conversation flows.
I'm running into this issue myself. Though it hasn't been mentioned at all in their documentation, I don't think attaching an in-memory database is out of the question. It seems that the user_id is the same regardless of when the conversation is initiated.
Making an API call every time the user rejoins the session would probably slow down the performance of the bot. Also, I noticed that you can't really construct a "pseudo-distributed database" by using the metadata key in the API if that is what you were suggesting. The metadata tag can be sent from Server -> Client (Messenger) but not from Client -> Server from what the documentation says.
I've spent some time working with this. The best solution is to use a database to track the user's conversation flow. The POST object contains the senders ID. You can use this ID to make a row in the database in which you'd definitely need to store this ID, any answers to the questions, and a field to keep track of of which step in the conversation.
Then you can use if statements in your code to return the proper responses. Some example code below:
if( $currentStep == '1' ){
// Ask Next Question
$message_to_reply = "Thank you! What's your name?";
$message_to_reply = '"text":"'.$message_to_reply.'"';
} elseif( $currentStep == '2' ){
// Ask Next Question
$message_to_reply = "Thank you! What's your email address?";
$message_to_reply = '"text":"'.$message_to_reply.'"';
} elseif( $currentStep == '3' ){
// Ask Next Question
$message_to_reply = "Thank you! What's your address?";
$message_to_reply = '"text":"'.$message_to_reply.'"';
}