Dialogflow-PHP-Client

A simple PHP and JavaScript web client for interacting with Google Dialogflow CX through an interface directly on a web page.

Introduction

I built this for my personal portfolio website originally, both to build out some demos and brush up on my JS and PHP. I struggled a bit at first to get authentication and API calls working (maybe I was reading the wrong documentation haha)! Anyway, once I got it working I decided to tidy up the code as best I can, and post it on github in case anyone else finds a use for it.

Donate if you want!

Features

• Authentication using a service account to retrieve an access token
• PHP for API calls, Javascript & HTML for user interface
• On-page interface
• conversation peristence, if the page is refreshed the chat log remains
• Very simple client so should be easy to understand and customise for your needs
• Debugging mode that shows raw API responses if needed
• Live demo at https://seanmaddison.uk/portfolio/chatbot-demo

Screenshot

Installation

1. Enable curl module in php.ini
2. Enable openssl module in php.ini
3. Install dependencies
   • install Google APIs Client Library for PHP
   • install vlucas/phpdotenv package
   • I've included a composer.json file for these that only installs the required dependencies, just run composer install in the root directory once downloaded
4. Setup your Dialogflow CX project and an agent flow
5. Create a service account for your agent using the Google cloud console. It needs to at least have Dialogflow Client API permission.
6. Download the .json key file for the service account and place it somewhere the PHP pages can access
   • Important: make sure browsers can't view or download this file! I've include a .htaccess file that instructs Apache2.4 to disallow this
7. Edit .env file with your agent details and file locations, using the .env-example file as a template
   • Important: make sure browsers can't view or download your .env file! I've specified a .htaccess file for this
8. Edit config.php to tweak the options that are there if needed
9. Browse to index.php to try out the client!
10. Customise and use :)

Development notes

To-do list

• Rich media handling in version 2
• Making the CSS themeable
• Tidy up code, variable names etc.
• Better error handling
• integrate another provider perhaps, e.g. GPT4