I am testing out this android chat application using Bluemix https://github.com/IBM-Bluemix/chatbot-watson-android
At some point in the conversation I will need to call a REST API/webservice to retrieve info about data that has been gathered and send it back to the user as a chat.
I don't want to do it from within the android application as the application wont work when I deploy it to another platform (e.g. slack).
Is there a way to call REST APIs from within watson?
I don't think the conversation service can do it directly, but can it link to another Bluemix service and use the result of that?
If you are already using some form of middleware this can be achieved by setting an action tag in the .JSON editor of the node that should fire the action. This then gets picked up by your middleware listener.
Alternatively try the new cloud actions feature that has just been released here https://console.bluemix.net/docs/services/conversation/dialog-actions.html#dialog-actions which is really simple and easy
I would create a server to intermediate the communication between your app (android) and the conversation service. This server could call/retrieve the required data before sending the conversation response to your app.
As you're using Bluemix, you could use Node-Red to easily do this.
Here is an example of an app that I made exactly this.
If you are starting with Watson and Bluemix, I strongly advice trying to use the Node-red starting pack. It's really easy to integrate Watson services and call REST API/web-services, even integrate with a database.
Here is a starting point to this:
https://nodered.org/docs/platforms/bluemix
Happy coding!
Related
I have a desktop app that will be distributed to users, and part of its code (which the user might be able to access) has to perform an API call to a third-party web service. However, this requires the API keys to be embedded into the source code, which causes some obvious security issues.
The main solution I've found while researching on the subject is to have a backend server between the user and the third-party API endpoint. So, I've been looking into Firebase for a while and it seems that this solution can be implemented using Firestore and Cloud Functions.
But, I wasn't able to find any clear examples that achieve something like this, and since I have no previous experience with Firebase or just backend programming in general, I would like to know if I'm on the right track and get more details about how to get it done, or if there are better alternatives for solving this issue. Any input is appreciated, thx.
You can use the firebase cloud functions as you mentioned. Your desktop application will be communicating with the cloud function - simple API call. Here you can find examples how to implement and deploy functions and test it locally https://firebase.google.com/docs/functions/get-started. Your cloud function will hold the API keys (it is backend so it will be secure if you dont expose it explicitly. Also the backend to backend communication is considered as secure). Finally, this cloud function will call the third party service and return some data back to the desktop app if needed. So you are on the right track, that is how the design should look like. If you need some help with cloud functions, you can also contact me directly.
I'm needing help. I need to execute a job (send to the server the UserId and the user location) even if the app is closed. I have tried many different approaches but I couldn't make it work.
It's an Xamarin forms app (android & iOS). I'm focused on Android side.
I have a push notification service working (FCM using the azure-NotificationHub) if necessary for the proposed solution.
If you need this task executed at a regular cadence, I would recommend adding a service to your application that will run in the background and largely be separated from the state of the rest of your application. You can find some documentation on that here: Run Background Service - Android.
You mentioned that you have a Notification Hub if necessary - essentially the Android Client SDK for Notification Hubs will be creating a service like the one linked above and listening for events to trigger certain actions. If you need data at random (i.e. not at a regular cadence) this could be a good approach. However, assuming you just want an updated location every few minutes, it's probably simpler to just run your own background service.
I have few charts to render in the UI. The data has been populated from multiple tables using a web API service. Whenever a change in the data, I get a notification in the web API service. My question is that, is it possible use signalr to refresh data real-time.
Is it possible to invoke a signalr client methods from the web API service? Your help is highly appreciated.
It is possible to invoke client methods from outside the hub. You need to use GlobalHost to do that. You can find more details in the tutorial.
I've recently started using application insights with a web api.
It will be really helpful to configure app insights to post error messages in a slack channel.
I've seen there is a slack connector but I am not sure how to use it, my guess is that this can be solved with the slack connector and a azure logic app, any tips? tutorials?
You may have a look at this link: https://github.com/Azure/azure-quickstart-templates/tree/master/demos/alert-to-slack-with-logic-app. I followed the instruction and it worked for me.
The tricky part is you need to click the "Deploy to Azure" button on this link page. It would redirect you to Azure Portal, and you will need to specify which channel you want the alert message to be sent e.g. #somechannel. Don't use direct message like #yourname, it has some problem with that and the logic app couldn't deploy for me.
Then you just follow the instruction to find the deployed logic app and authenticate it by logging into slack. And you also need get the logic app URI from the deployment output as in the instruction. Once you put the URI into the alert webhook, you are ready to go!
It's relatively easy to set up a slack webhook.
There's a pretty good C# nuget package for this at https://github.com/nerdfury/Slack.Webhooks
Although you'd need to set up a seperate service to poll and route the app insights data.
There's also commercial options.
getcloudbot.com allows you to hook your Azure Application Insights bundle directly into your slack channel. It's good at staying on top of your services.
Disclaimer : I run it.
You can configure an alert for your error messages https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/app-insights-alerts
And then configure sending to Slack using web hooks: https://code.msdn.microsoft.com/Create-Azure-Alerts-with-b938077a
Another quick solution to this, which doesn't involve additional code or a logic app, is to set up a Slack email integration, which provides you an inbound email address for a given channel. You can use that in Application Insights in the "Additional administrator email(s)" field.
This isn't perfect, as you don't really get a lot of details in the post to slack, but it will notify you and provide the name of the alert.
The most easiest path that I found to integrate was using an app named Slack Email which sends email alerts to slack. Once you subscribe this email id to alerts in Application Insights it will start sending the messages on the specific channel you have linked the email to.
https://teamesub.slack.com/apps/A0F81496D-email
I am trying to make firebase and batch work together so that I can fire push notification when something in firebase db got changed. I followed this tutorial and now i want to make them work automatically and for that i contacted with batch's and they replied me
write your own server-side code to 1. detect Firebase db changes 2. call the Batch API.
For "detect Firebase db changes" I have to create a server-side code which will track changes and call batch's api accordingly. Then follow this documentation for attaching the changed content and send it to appropriate user.
I don't know how to create the server side code. Anyone can give me a quick instructions on it or there's any tutorial related to this?
To write server-side Firebase code you can use the node.js SDK. See https://www.firebase.com/docs/web/quickstart.html (search the page for node.js).
The API is exactly the same as the regular web API except that you'll be writing it as a node.js application that can be run on the server. You can then integrate this with Batch's API.