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README.md

Zummer Bot (C#)

In this tutorial we will cover how to build an information search bot - Zummer using - Bing Web Search API and Language Understanding Intelligent Services (LUIS)

Deploy to Azure

Bot Recipe/Prerequisites:

  • Microsoft Bot Framework to host and publish to multiple platforms. You can download Bot Framework Emulator from here. More details in this documentation article 

  • Bing Web Search API to fetch the most relevant Wikipedia article on any given topic.

  • Luis.ai to understand the query intent

 

Let's get started, shall we?

Here is a simple flowchart of what the Zummer bot logic is:

 

Creating a LUIS application and training it to understand the query intent

Zummer bot is trained to understand the following intents:

  • Greeting

  • Article Search by topic

 

  1. Sign in and Create an application on www.luis.ai
    Note: You can either import the LUIS application JSON file “ZummerLuisApp.json” found in the sample folder

  2. Create intent, entities and train LUIS

    1. Add an intent for Greeting and Search each by clicking on '+'

    2. Add utterances like Hi, Hello, etc. and assign it to the Greeting intent

    3. For Search Intent: Create “ArticleTopic” Entity

    4. Add utterances for queries that contain "ArticleTopic" entity

  3. Train your models by clicking “Train”

  4. Publish your application

  5. Save your published endpoint URL which would be used when creating your bot on bot framework

Calling the LUIS application from MS bot framework project

  1. Create a LuisDialog as in MainDialog.cs

    [Serializable]
internal sealed class MainDialog : LuisDialog<object>
{
private readonly IHandlerFactory handlerFactory;

public MainDialog(ILuisService luis, IHandlerFactory handlerFactory)
    : base(luis)
{
    SetField.NotNull(out this.handlerFactory, nameof(handlerFactory), handlerFactory);
}

  2. Register both MainDialog and LuisModelAttribute (use the modelId and subscriptionKey from the published LUIS URL) in the dependency container, in MainModule.cs

    internal sealed class MainModule : Module
{
    protected override void Load(ContainerBuilder builder)
    {
        base.Load(builder);

        builder.Register(c => new LuisModelAttribute("b550e80a-74ec-4bb4-bcbc-fe35f5b1fce4", "a6d628faa2404cd799f2a291245eb135")).AsSelf().AsImplementedInterfaces().SingleInstance();

        // Top Level Dialog
        builder.RegisterType<MainDialog>().As<IDialog<object>>().InstancePerDependency();

  3. Create methods in this dialog to handle your LUIS intents. In this tutorial a factory is created that returns the needed object that is responsible handling certain intents and  responding to the user

    [LuisIntent(ZummerStrings.GreetingIntentName)]
public async Task GreetingIntentHandlerAsync(IDialogContext context, IAwaitable<IMessageActivity> activity, LuisResult result)
{
    await this.handlerFactory.CreateIntentHandler(ZummerStrings.GreetingIntentName).Respond(activity, result);
    context.Wait(this.MessageReceived);
}

[LuisIntent(ZummerStrings.SearchIntentName)]
public async Task FindArticlesIntentHandlerAsync(IDialogContext context, IAwaitable<IMessageActivity> activity, LuisResult result)
{
    await this.handlerFactory.CreateIntentHandler(ZummerStrings.SearchIntentName).Respond(activity, result);
    context.Wait(this.MessageReceived);
}

 

Fetching Wikipedia articles on a topic using Bing Web Search API

  1. The model classes that represent the Bing Web Search API JSON response can be found in folder “Models\Search*”*

  2. Create a free tier “Key” that will be used for calling the Bing APIs on Microsoft Cognitive Service subscriptions

  3. Bing Web Search API request format details could be found at Bing Web Search API reference page
    This tutorial implements communication with Bing Web Search API service and manipulating the user's query to get a response with only Wikipedia articles through “FindArticles”  in BingSearchServices.cs

    namespace Zummer.Services 
{ 
    /// <summary> 
    /// Responsible for calling Bing Web Search API 
    /// </summary> 
    internal sealed class BingSearchService : ISearchService 
    { 
        private const string BingSearchEndpoint = "https://api.cognitive.microsoft.com/bing/v5.0/search/"; 
 
        private static readonly Dictionary<string, string> Headers = new Dictionary<string, string> 
        { 
            { "Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key", ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["BingSearchServiceKey"] } 
        };  
 
        private readonly IApiHandler apiHandler; 
 
        public BingSearchService(IApiHandler apiHandler) 
        { 
            SetField.NotNull(out this.apiHandler, nameof(apiHandler), apiHandler); 
        } 
 
        public async Task<BingSearch> FindArticles(string query) 
        { 
            var requestParameters = new Dictionary<string, string> 
            { 
                { "q", $"{query} site:wikipedia.org" } 
            }; 
 
            return await this.apiHandler.GetJsonAsync<BingSearch>(BingSearchEndpoint, requestParameters, Headers); 
        } 
    } 
}

    Note: ApiHandler is the class implementing IApiHandler. It is a singleton wrapper for HttpClient, to send Http requests. Code can be found in “Services\ApiHandler.cs”

  4. SearchIntentHandler.cs “Respond” method contains

    1. Calling *“*FindArticles” methods to receive the BingSearch response

    2. Fetching first result and extracting information needed using"PrepareZummerResult" method, then sending a formatted response to the user

    public async Task Respond(IAwaitable<IMessageActivity> activity, LuisResult result)
{
    EntityRecommendation entityRecommendation;

    var query = result.TryFindEntity(ZummerStrings.ArticlesEntityTopic, out entityRecommendation)
        ? entityRecommendation.Entity
        : result.Query;

    await this.botToUser.PostAsync(string.Format(Strings.SearchTopicTypeMessage));

    var bingSearch = await this.bingSearchService.FindArticles(query);

    var zummerResult = this.PrepareZummerResult(query, bingSearch.webPages.value[0]);

    var summaryText =  $"### [{zummerResult.Tile}]({zummerResult.Url})\n{zummerResult.Snippet}\n\n" ;

    summaryText +=
        $"*{string.Format(Strings.PowerBy, $"[Bing™](https://www.bing.com/search/?q={zummerResult.Query} site:wikipedia.org)")}*";

    await this.botToUser.PostAsync(summaryText);
}
    private ZummerSearchResult PrepareZummerResult(string query, Value page)
{
    string url;
    var myUri = new Uri(page.url);

    if (myUri.Host == "www.bing.com" && myUri.AbsolutePath == "/cr")
    {
        url = HttpUtility.ParseQueryString(myUri.Query).Get("r");
    }
    else
    {
        url = page.url;
    }

    var zummerResult = new ZummerSearchResult
    {
        Url = url,
        Query = query,
        Tile = page.name,
        Snippet = page.snippet
    };

    return zummerResult;
}

Outcome

You will see the following when connecting the Bot to the Emulator:

More Information

To get more information about how to get started in Bot Builder for .NET, Bing Web Search API and LUIS please review the following resources: