Channels

Channel in terms of JAICF is a messaging or voice platform that actually receives a user's requests through some user interface.

Supported platforms

Voice assistants

• Amazon Alexa
• Google Actions
• Aimybox

Messengers

• Facebook Messenger
• Telegram
• Slack

Multi-channel support

JAICF is a multi-channel (or multi-platform) framework, meaning that a single conversational agent could be connected to multiple channels and work via multiple channels simultaneously.

This can be achieved without a lack of channel-related features, because JAICF is built on top of native channel libraries and provides an access to the native request and response objects.

Some examples

state("main") {

    activators {
        catchAll()
        event(AlexaEvent.LAUNCH)
    }

    action {
        var name = context.client["name"]

        if (name == null) {
            request.telegram?.run {
                name = message.chat.firstName ?: message.chat.username
            }
            request.facebook?.run {
                name = reactions.facebook?.queryUserProfile()?.firstName()
            }
        }
    }
}

In this example you can see how the user's name could be retrieved from the different channel-specific request data. Thanks to Kotlin extensions feature, it is possible to use request.telegram?, request.facebook? and others null-safe variables to have an access to the channel-related native requests.

Learn more about request here.

Here is another example that hows how to build a channel-specified responses.

state("cancel") {
    activators {
        intent(AlexaIntent.CANCEL)
        intent("CancelIntent")
    }

    action {
        reactions.run {
            say("Okay $break200ms See you latter then! Bye bye!")

            actions?.endConversation()

            alexa?.run {
                stopAudioPlayer()
                endSession()
            }

        }
    }
}

In the code snippet above you can see, how reactions object is used to build a response from an agent. You can use some common response builder methods like say to send a simple text or speech response. At the same time a channel-related native methods could be used as well via null-safe variables like reactions.actions? for Google Actions, reactions.alexa? for Alexa and etc.

Learn more about reactions here.

As you can see, every channel in JAICF defines it's own BotRequest and Reactions implementations enabling the conversational agent to achieve a channel-specific features.

This makes JAICF a multi-platform solution for chatbots and voice assistants building.

Channel types

Channels are divided by the protocol type that is used in different platforms. Some channels like Alexa or Google Assistant are synchronous webhooks meaning that a single response is allowed for each user's request. Others can be asynchronous webhooks, long polling and websockets like Facebook Messenger, Slack or Telegram, meaning that multiple responses are allowed to send for every user's request.

How to use

To make it possible to connect your JAICF agent to some channel or channels, you have to provide channel-specific configuration. Here is an example:

fun main() {
    embeddedServer(Netty, 8000) {
        routing {
            httpBotRouting(
                "/alexa" to AlexaChannel(gameClockBot),
                "/actions" to ActionsFulfillment.dialogflow(gameClockBot)
            )
        }
    }.start(wait = true)
}

Here you can see how a single Ktor server can be started to serve requests to both webhook endpoints of your JAICF gameClockBot.

Here is another example that shows how can be served a Facebook Messenger requests:

fun main() {
    val channel = FacebookChannel(
        helloWorldBot,
        FacebookPageConfig(
            pageAccessToken = "EAAIBNxZCCzjoBADyorVAY21KniOikUxVYjhmnZBElHpeN1vr9lEJzXJdLGUsvcvwTRMmNwwZBZBDEZCBPXlZB0UuwU1o3CZCdm0WJILg1ucoNB9ezKeZBbOvy29prWeZAuLA4L5G9lg5yZBZCfwnLAPEZB9W3YLvO20uZBCfHtARowF8PPG2VKk6YAmPZC",
            appSecret = "11deaea42beda58ddfef1b1eeab57338",
            verifyToken = "jaicf-verify-token"
        )
    )

    embeddedServer(Netty, 8000) {
        routing {

            httpBotRouting("/" to channel)

            get("/") {
                call.respondText(
                    channel.verifyToken(
                        call.parameters["hub.mode"],
                        call.parameters["hub.verify_token"],
                        call.parameters["hub.challenge"]
                    )
                )
            }
        }
    }.start(wait = true)
}

Some channels could be configured much easier:

fun main() {
    TelegramChannel(helloWorldBot, "580468601:AAHaMg4gOsN2A_zvIO6-PouVk3GcZ_WVrdI").run()
}

Please learn more about how to connect to the specified channel in the channel-related library documentation here.