API.AI Webhook

API.AI Webhook is a fulfillment microframework for API.AI based on Flask for getting started quickly with API.AI webhooks.

Users' Guide

Quick Start

Install the package with

pip install apiaiwebhook

A minimal api.ai Webhook application looks like this:

from apiaiwebhook import APIAIWebhook
app = APIAIWebhook(__name__)

@app.fulfillment("hello-world")
def hello_world():
    return app.make_response_apiai(speech="Hello World!")

if __name__ == '__main__':
    app.run()

To run the application, just execute the python file:

python hello_world.py

To test the application, you can use either the in-built api.ai test client

app.testing = True
res = app.test_client_apiai().webhook(action="hello-world"})
assert res.status_code == 200
assert ""Hello, World!" in res.data

Or you can use curl

curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"result": {"action": "hello-world"}}' http://127.0.0.1:5000/webhook    

Parameters

The parameters are extracted from results/parameters. This dictionary is passed to the fulfillment function via ** operator (unpacked):

{
    "results": {
        "action": "hello-world",
        "parameters": {
            "parameter": "example value"
            }
    }
}

The fulfillment function declaration should look like this:

@app.fulfillment("hello-world")
def hello_world(parameter = None, **kwargs):
    return app.make_response_apiai(speech="Hello, %s!" % parameter)

The default value is required when the parameter can be empty. Kwargs is useful when additional parameters are expected in the future.

Response

The webhook dispatcher responses:

• HTTP 400 when api_key_value is defined but it the authentication header is not provided.
• HTTP 401 when api_key_value is defined but it is invalid.
• HTTP 404 when fulfillment function is not defined for the provided action.

Otherwise it returns a valid application/json content-type HTTP response. The response can be create using the helper function of make_response_apiai()

Example:

    @app.fulfillment("hello-world")
    def my_fulfillment_none():
        return app.make_response_apiai(speech="Hello, World!"
                                       display_text="Hello, World! I am please to meet you!")

The response will be like:

    {
        "speech": "Hello, World!",
        "displayText": "Hello, World! I am please to meet you!",
        "data": None,
        "contextOut": [],
        "source": <name of Flask application>,
        "followupEvent": None
    }

Securing

The APIAIWebhook class defines the initialization parameters of api_key_header (default is api-key) and api_key_value (default is None) parameters.

In order to secure your webhook, define a shared secret:

from apiaiwebhook import APIAIWebhook
app = APIAIWebhook(__name__, api_key_value="secret") 

Then configure the authentication header in your API.AI agent.

Testing

The API.AI Webhook Client extends the Flask Client in order to post valid webhook messages.

app.testing = True
app.debug = True
r = app.test_client_apiai().webhook(action="hello-world",
                                    parameters={"param": "value"})

Flask

The APIAIWebhook class is derived from Flask. Visit the official website to extend the functionality of API.AI Webhook

Development

Before running or deploying this application, install the framework using pip:

pip install -e .

To test the framework, execute the unit tests via:

python unit_tests.py