Interactions with the API

For each conversational turn, an interaction takes place. During an interaction, an end-user sends input to Conversational Agents (Dialogflow CX), and Conversational Agents (Dialogflow CX) sends a response. You have two options when implementing your system to handle interactions: using the API or using an integration.

When using the API, your system needs to handle the following:

• Build an agent.
• Provide a user interface for end-users.
• Call the Dialogflow API for each conversational turn to send end-user input to the API.
• Unless your agent responses are purely static (uncommon), you need to host a webhook service to handle webhook-enabled fulfillment.

When using an integration, your system only needs to handle the following:

• Build an agent.
• Optionally implement a webhook service.

The following diagram shows the steps that take place for one conversational turn of a session.

Note: Communications between your systems and integrations, and Dialogflow are encrypted in transit. Also, Google internal component communications are encrypted using Application Layer Transport Security (ALTS).

1. The end-user types or says something, known as end-user input.
2. Your user interface or integration system receives the input and forwards it to the Dialogflow API in a detect intent request.
3. The Dialogflow API receives the detect intent request. It matches the input to an intent or form parameter, sets parameters as needed, and updates session state. If it needs to call a webhook-enabled fulfillment, it sends a webhook request to your webhook service, otherwise, go to step 6.
4. Your webhook service receives the webhook request. Your service takes any actions necessary, like calling external APIs, querying or updating a database, etc.
5. Your webhook service builds a response and sends a webhook response back to Conversational Agents (Dialogflow CX).
6. Conversational Agents (Dialogflow CX) creates a detect intent response. If a webhook was called, it uses the response provided in the webhook response. If no webhook was called, it uses the static response defined in the agent. Conversational Agents (Dialogflow CX) sends a detect intent response to your user interface or integration system.
7. Your user interface or integration system receives the detect intent response and forwards the text or audio response to the end-user.
8. The end-user sees or hears the response.

Guide purpose

This guide shows you how to call the API for one conversational turn for an agent that is not using an integration (step 2 from diagram above). This guide does not show you how to implement a user interface for your end-user.

Before you begin

You should do the following before reading this guide:

1. Read flow basics.
2. Perform setup steps.
3. Create a new agent or continue using the agent you created in Build an agent using flows or Build an agent using playbooks

Collect IDs

The samples below require several IDs as input. To find your project ID, region ID, and agent ID:

Dialogflow CX console

1. Open the Dialogflow CX console.
2. Select your Google Cloud project to open the agent selector.
3. Click the option menu for an agent in the list.
4. Click the copy name button.
5. This copies the full identifying name of your agent, which includes your project ID, region ID, and agent ID in the form:
   projects/PROJECT_ID/locations/REGION_ID/agents/AGENT_ID

Agent Builder console

1. Go to the Agent Builder console:

   Agent Builder console

2. Your project ID is shown at the top of the console.

3. The Location column shows region IDs.

4. Select an app.

5. The browser URL path segment after agents/ contains the agent app ID.

You also need a session ID. A session represents a conversation between a Conversational Agents (Dialogflow CX) agent and an end-user. You create a unique session ID at the beginning of a conversation and use it for each turn of the conversation. For the purpose of trying the API, you can use any string ID that is at most 36 bytes, like test-session-123.

Call detect intent

The following samples call the Sessions.detectIntent method. Go to the Session API reference

Select a protocol and version for the Session reference:

Protocol	V3	V3beta1
REST	Session resource	Session resource
RPC	Session interface	Session interface
C++	SessionsClient	Not available
C#	SessionsClient	Not available
Go	SessionsClient	Not available
Java	SessionsClient	SessionsClient
Node.js	SessionsClient	SessionsClient
PHP	Not available	Not available
Python	SessionsClient	SessionsClient
Ruby	Not available	Not available

Close

REST

Before using any of the request data, make the following replacements:

• PROJECT_ID: your Google Cloud project ID
• AGENT_ID: your agent ID
• REGION_ID: your region ID
• SESSION_ID: your session ID
• END_USER_INPUT: the end-user input

HTTP method and URL:

POST https://REGION_ID-dialogflow.googleapis.com/v3/projects/PROJECT_ID/locations/REGION_ID/agents/AGENT_ID/sessions/SESSION_ID:detectIntent

Request JSON body:

{
  "queryInput": {
    "text": {
      "text": "END_USER_INPUT"
    },
    "languageCode": "en"
  },
  "queryParams": {
    "timeZone": "America/Los_Angeles"
  }
}

To send your request, expand one of these options:

curl (Linux, macOS, or Cloud Shell)

Note: The following command assumes that you have logged in to the gcloud CLI with your user account by running gcloud init or gcloud auth login , or by using Cloud Shell, which automatically logs you into the gcloud CLI . You can check the currently active account by running gcloud auth list.

Save the request body in a file named request.json, and execute the following command:

curl -X POST \
     -H "Authorization: Bearer $(gcloud auth print-access-token)" \
     -H "x-goog-user-project: PROJECT_ID" \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8" \
     -d @request.json \
     "https://REGION_ID-dialogflow.googleapis.com/v3/projects/PROJECT_ID/locations/REGION_ID/agents/AGENT_ID/sessions/SESSION_ID:detectIntent"

PowerShell (Windows)

Note: The following command assumes that you have logged in to the gcloud CLI with your user account by running gcloud init or gcloud auth login . You can check the currently active account by running gcloud auth list.

Save the request body in a file named request.json, and execute the following command:

$cred = gcloud auth print-access-token
$headers = @{ "Authorization" = "Bearer $cred"; "x-goog-user-project" = "PROJECT_ID" }

Invoke-WebRequest `
    -Method POST `
    -Headers $headers `
    -ContentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8" `
    -InFile request.json `
    -Uri "https://REGION_ID-dialogflow.googleapis.com/v3/projects/PROJECT_ID/locations/REGION_ID/agents/AGENT_ID/sessions/SESSION_ID:detectIntent" | Select-Object -Expand Content

You should receive a JSON response similar to the following:

{
  "responseId": "38e8f23d-eed2-445e-a3e7-149b242dd669",
  "queryResult": {
    "text": "I want to buy a shirt",
    "languageCode": "en",
    "responseMessages": [
      {
        "text": {
          "text": [
            "Ok, let's start a new order."
          ]
        }
      },
      {
        "text": {
          "text": [
            "I'd like to collect a bit more information from you."
          ]
        }
      },
      {
        "text": {
          "text": [
            "What color would you like?"
          ]
        }
      },
      {}
    ],
    "currentPage": {
      "name": "projects/PROJECT_ID/locations/us-central1/agents/133b0350-f2d2-4928-b0b3-5b332259d0f7/flows/00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000/pages/ce0b88c4-9292-455c-9c59-ec153dad94cc",
      "displayName": "New Order"
    },
    "intent": {
      "name": "projects/PROJECT_ID/locations/us-central1/agents/133b0350-f2d2-4928-b0b3-5b332259d0f7/intents/0adebb70-a727-4687-b8bc-fbbc2ac0b665",
      "displayName": "order.new"
    },
    "intentDetectionConfidence": 1,
    "diagnosticInfo": { ... },
    "match": {
      "intent": {
        "name": "projects/PROJECT_ID/locations/us-central1/agents/133b0350-f2d2-4928-b0b3-5b332259d0f7/intents/0adebb70-a727-4687-b8bc-fbbc2ac0b665",
        "displayName": "order.new"
      },
      "resolvedInput": "I want to buy a shirt",
      "matchType": "INTENT",
      "confidence": 1
    }
  }
}

Java

To authenticate to Dialogflow, set up Application Default Credentials. For more information, see Set up authentication for a local development environment.

import com.google.api.gax.rpc.ApiException;
import com.google.cloud.dialogflow.cx.v3beta1.DetectIntentRequest;
import com.google.cloud.dialogflow.cx.v3beta1.DetectIntentResponse;
import com.google.cloud.dialogflow.cx.v3beta1.QueryInput;
import com.google.cloud.dialogflow.cx.v3beta1.QueryResult;
import com.google.cloud.dialogflow.cx.v3beta1.SessionName;
import com.google.cloud.dialogflow.cx.v3beta1.SessionsClient;
import com.google.cloud.dialogflow.cx.v3beta1.SessionsSettings;
import com.google.cloud.dialogflow.cx.v3beta1.TextInput;
import com.google.common.collect.Maps;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.Map;

public class DetectIntent {

  // DialogFlow API Detect Intent sample with text inputs.
  public static Map<String, QueryResult> detectIntent(
      String projectId,
      String locationId,
      String agentId,
      String sessionId,
      List<String> texts,
      String languageCode)
      throws IOException, ApiException {
    SessionsSettings.Builder sessionsSettingsBuilder = SessionsSettings.newBuilder();
    if (locationId.equals("global")) {
      sessionsSettingsBuilder.setEndpoint("dialogflow.googleapis.com:443");
    } else {
      sessionsSettingsBuilder.setEndpoint(locationId + "-dialogflow.googleapis.com:443");
    }
    SessionsSettings sessionsSettings = sessionsSettingsBuilder.build();

    Map<String, QueryResult> queryResults = Maps.newHashMap();
    // Instantiates a client.

    // Note: close() needs to be called on the SessionsClient object to clean up resources
    // such as threads. In the example below, try-with-resources is used,
    // which automatically calls close().
    try (SessionsClient sessionsClient = SessionsClient.create(sessionsSettings)) {
      // Set the session name using the projectID (my-project-id), locationID (global), agentID
      // (UUID), and sessionId (UUID).
      SessionName session =
          SessionName.ofProjectLocationAgentSessionName(projectId, locationId, agentId, sessionId);

      // TODO : Uncomment if you want to print session path
      // System.out.println("Session Path: " + session.toString());

      // Detect intents for each text input.
      for (String text : texts) {
        // Set the text (hello) for the query.
        TextInput.Builder textInput = TextInput.newBuilder().setText(text);

        // Build the query with the TextInput and language code (en-US).
        QueryInput queryInput =
            QueryInput.newBuilder().setText(textInput).setLanguageCode(languageCode).build();

        // Build the DetectIntentRequest with the SessionName and QueryInput.
        DetectIntentRequest request =
            DetectIntentRequest.newBuilder()
                .setSession(session.toString())
                .setQueryInput(queryInput)
                .build();

        // Performs the detect intent request.
        DetectIntentResponse response = sessionsClient.detectIntent(request);

        // Display the query result.
        QueryResult queryResult = response.getQueryResult();

        // TODO : Uncomment if you want to print queryResult
        // System.out.println("====================");
        // System.out.format("Query Text: '%s'\n", queryResult.getText());
        // System.out.format(
        //     "Detected Intent: %s (confidence: %f)\n",
        //     queryResult.getIntent().getDisplayName(),
        //         queryResult.getIntentDetectionConfidence());

        queryResults.put(text, queryResult);
      }
    }
    return queryResults;
  }
}

Node.js

To authenticate to Dialogflow, set up Application Default Credentials. For more information, see Set up authentication for a local development environment.

/**
 * TODO(developer): Uncomment these variables before running the sample.
 */
// const projectId = 'my-project';
// const location = 'global';
// const agentId = 'my-agent';
// const query = 'Hello';
// const languageCode = 'en'

// Imports the Google Cloud Some API library
const {SessionsClient} = require('@google-cloud/dialogflow-cx');
/**
 * Example for regional endpoint:
 *   const location = 'us-central1'
 *   const client = new SessionsClient({apiEndpoint: 'us-central1-dialogflow.googleapis.com'})
 */
const client = new SessionsClient();

async function detectIntentText() {
  const sessionId = Math.random().toString(36).substring(7);
  const sessionPath = client.projectLocationAgentSessionPath(
    projectId,
    location,
    agentId,
    sessionId
  );
  const request = {
    session: sessionPath,
    queryInput: {
      text: {
        text: query,
      },
      languageCode,
    },
  };
  const [response] = await client.detectIntent(request);
  for (const message of response.queryResult.responseMessages) {
    if (message.text) {
      console.log(`Agent Response: ${message.text.text}`);
    }
  }
  if (response.queryResult.match.intent) {
    console.log(
      `Matched Intent: ${response.queryResult.match.intent.displayName}`
    );
  }
  console.log(
    `Current Page: ${response.queryResult.currentPage.displayName}`
  );
}

detectIntentText();

Python

To authenticate to Dialogflow, set up Application Default Credentials. For more information, see Set up authentication for a local development environment.

def run_sample():
    # TODO(developer): Replace these values when running the function
    project_id = "YOUR-PROJECT-ID"
    # For more information about regionalization see https://cloud.google.com/dialogflow/cx/docs/how/region
    location_id = "YOUR-LOCATION-ID"
    # For more info on agents see https://cloud.google.com/dialogflow/cx/docs/concept/agent
    agent_id = "YOUR-AGENT-ID"
    agent = f"projects/{project_id}/locations/{location_id}/agents/{agent_id}"
    # For more information on sessions see https://cloud.google.com/dialogflow/cx/docs/concept/session
    session_id = uuid.uuid4()
    texts = ["Hello"]
    # For more supported languages see https://cloud.google.com/dialogflow/es/docs/reference/language
    language_code = "en-us"

    detect_intent_texts(agent, session_id, texts, language_code)


def detect_intent_texts(agent, session_id, texts, language_code):
    """Returns the result of detect intent with texts as inputs.

    Using the same `session_id` between requests allows continuation
    of the conversation."""
    session_path = f"{agent}/sessions/{session_id}"
    print(f"Session path: {session_path}\n")
    client_options = None
    agent_components = AgentsClient.parse_agent_path(agent)
    location_id = agent_components["location"]
    if location_id != "global":
        api_endpoint = f"{location_id}-dialogflow.googleapis.com:443"
        print(f"API Endpoint: {api_endpoint}\n")
        client_options = {"api_endpoint": api_endpoint}
    session_client = SessionsClient(client_options=client_options)

    for text in texts:
        text_input = session.TextInput(text=text)
        query_input = session.QueryInput(text=text_input, language_code=language_code)
        request = session.DetectIntentRequest(
            session=session_path, query_input=query_input
        )
        response = session_client.detect_intent(request=request)

        print("=" * 20)
        print(f"Query text: {response.query_result.text}")
        response_messages = [
            " ".join(msg.text.text) for msg in response.query_result.response_messages
        ]
        print(f"Response text: {' '.join(response_messages)}\n")

Productionization

Before running your agent in production, be sure to implement the productionization best practices.