Wit.ai - When are the actions triggered?

Question

I have trouble to understand when the actions are triggered by the Node.js SDK. At first, I thought that an action is only triggered when we explicitely call it using the story Web page.

I just realized that this is not the case.

For instance, when a user's context is not properly cleared, some actions may be run instead of another (or sometimes two actions may be run for a single message). Even if some actions are not part of the current story.

What are exactly the conditions to trigger an action in the Node.js SDK ?

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 18 '16 at 20:04

Here is something that I have setup for an FB Bot, so you will need to change the recipientId mechanism to suit your needs.

// CALL THIS TO SEND MESSAGES TO WIT 
function sendToWit(sessionId, messageText) {
    // This will run all actions until nothing left to do
    wit.runActions(sessionId, // Current session
        messageText, sessions[sessionId].context // Current session state
    ).then(function (context) {
        // Waiting for further messages to proceed.
        if (context['done']) {
            delete sessions[sessionId];
        }
        // Updating current session state
        sessions[sessionId].context = context;
    }).catch(function (err) {
        console.error('WIT ERROR MSG: ', err.stack || err);
    });
}
//Wit Actions
var actions = {
    // Basic text message response 
    send: function send(request, response) {
        var sessionId = request.sessionId,
              context = request.context,
              entities = request.entities,
              recipientId = sessions[sessionId].fbid,
              text = response.text;
              return new Promise(function (resolve, reject) {
                callMySendAPI(recipientId, text);
                return resolve();
            });
    }
    , // All of your custom actions will go here ie;
    myCustomAction: function (request) {
        console.log('myCustomAction Called');
        var sessionId = request.sessionId;
        var recipientId = sessions[sessionId].fbid;
        return new Promise(function (resolve, reject) {
            //Call some API and do lookup by recipientId, you could lookup by anything ie; context.city for weather lookup etc..
            callSomeAPI(recipientId).then(function (result) {
                context.something = result.something; //Parsed JSON
                return Promise.resolve(context);
            }).catch(error => {
                // something went wrong
            });
            return resolve(context);
        });
    }
}

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 04 '16 at 05:40

0

The bot is going to try all the stories until it finds one that match, if it doesn't it replies the last one it finds.

So I did a story that I called no_match which calls an action on my client. You have to make sure too that in the Understanding tab, Search Strategy and Values are correctly set.

answered Nov 04 '16 at 05:40

eXa

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Thanks. Yes I used the same method too. However, I was talking about the actions in the node.js SDK, not the stories. – Nitsuja Nov 04 '16 at 12:38
You define in your node.js code the actions and then in the stories you can use them. If you create an action `myAction` in your story and you copy pasted these actions https://github.com/wit-ai/node-wit#response it will execute the action named `myAction` It's always the wit reply that execute actions and if it executes an unexpected action it's because it thought it was the correct one. – eXa Nov 09 '16 at 23:43
Yes you're right. The problem is not the SDK as I first thought but Wit.ai itself since it does not always always predict the right actions. Thanks for the help. – Nitsuja Nov 10 '16 at 17:49
Glad it I could be of help, could you accept the answer. – eXa Nov 17 '16 at 00:51

Wit.ai - When are the actions triggered?

2 Answers2