How can I interpret /perceive the presence of buttons in the response of directline api?

Question

Consider there is a action card response from the MS bot & it looks as follows in skype:

When this similar response comes in the REST APIs i.e using Direct Line APIs. The following is the relevant part of JSON response.

{
  "id": "1t90Ym3PEry|000000000000000014",
  "conversationId": "1t90Ym3PEry",
  "created": "2016-12-06T09:34:55.6280699Z",
  "from": "rich3cards",
  "images": [
    "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7c/Seattlenighttimequeenanne.jpg/320px-Seattlenighttimequeenanne.jpg"
  ],
  "attachments": [],
  "eTag": "W/\"datetime'2016-12-06T09%3A34%3A54.94083Z'\""
},
{
  "id": "1t90Ym3PEry|000000000000000014",
  "conversationId": "1t90Ym3PEry",
  "created": "2016-12-06T09:34:55.6280699Z",
  "from": "rich3cards",
  "text": "Hero Card\n\nSpace Needle\n\nThe <b>Space Needle</b> is an observation tower in Seattle, Washington, a landmark of the Pacific Northwest, and an icon of Seattle.\n\n(Current Weather) action?weather=Seattle, WA",
  "images": [],
  "attachments": [],
  "eTag": "W/\"datetime'2016-12-06T09%3A34%3A54.94083Z'\""
}

Now, the question is about how do we parse this json to get the button data [(Current Weather) action?weather=Seattle, WA"] out of the text attribute? Is the only way is patter match ?

Has anyone faced or know solution, please put some light here too ;)

Update: If its different channel like skype/webchat/etc.. the JSON response looks very proper to consume, following is the sample JSON.

{
  "type": "message",
  "id": "5AdoK89rtSc|000000000000000018",
  "timestamp": "2016-12-06T09:53:20.4777291Z",
  "channelId": "webchat",
  "from": {
    "id": "rich3cards",
    "name": "RichCards"
  },
  "conversation": {
    "id": "5AdoK89rtSc"
  },
  "attachments": [
    {
      "contentType": "application/vnd.microsoft.card.hero",
      "content": {
        "title": "Hero Card",
        "subtitle": "Space Needle",
        "text": "The <b>Space Needle</b> is an observation tower in Seattle, Washington, a landmark of the Pacific Northwest, and an icon of Seattle.",
        "images": [
          {
            "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7c/Seattlenighttimequeenanne.jpg/320px-Seattlenighttimequeenanne.jpg"
          }
        ],
        "buttons": [
          {
            "type": "postBack",
            "value": "action?weather=Seattle, WA",
            "title": "Current Weather"
          }
        ]
      }
    }
  ]

Possible duplicate of [Direct Line API - Bot Framework / Hero Cards and Attachments](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/40852909/direct-line-api-bot-framework-hero-cards-and-attachments) — Ezequiel Jadib, Dec 06 '16 at 10:01

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 06 '16 at 09:56

As mentioned in the comments, you are using DirectLine v1.1. Unfortunately, v1.1 doesn't support attachments/cards and so there isn't a good way to understand/parse the card.

You might want to consider moving to DirectLine v3 which has full support for attachments.

Alternatively, if you want to support Cards, you might have to do something custom as shown in the DirectLine sample. There, the bot is sending the hero card through the ChannelData field and the client is parsing that accordingly. However, you might have to add the logic to detect who is talking to the bot so you send the cards as ChannelData only if the caller is DirectLine and not one of the other clients (such as skype)

How can I interpret /perceive the presence of buttons in the response of directline api?

1 Answers1