Wit Node.js SDK

node-wit is the Node.js SDK for Wit.ai.

Install

In your Node.js project, run:

npm install --save node-wit

Quickstart

Run in your terminal:

# Node.js <= 6.x.x, add the flag --harmony_destructuring
node --harmony_destructuring examples/basic.js <MY_TOKEN>
# Node.js >= v6.x.x
node examples/basic.js <MY_TOKEN>

See examples folder for more examples.

Messenger integration example

See examples/messenger.js for a thoroughly documented tutorial.

Overview

The Wit module provides a Wit class with the following methods:

• message - the Wit message API

You can also require a library function to test out your bot in the terminal. require('node-wit').interactive

Wit class

The Wit constructor takes the following parameters:

• accessToken - the access token of your Wit instance
• logger - (optional) the object handling the logging.
• apiVersion - (optional) the API version to use instead of the recommended one

The logger object should implement the methods debug, info, warn and error. They can receive an arbitrary number of parameters to log. For convenience, we provide a Logger class, taking a log level parameter

Example:

const {Wit, log} = require('node-wit');

const client = new Wit({
  accessToken: MY_TOKEN,
  logger: new log.Logger(log.DEBUG) // optional
});

console.log(client.message('set an alarm tomorrow at 7am'));

.message()

The Wit message API.

Takes the following parameters:

• message - the text you want Wit.ai to extract the information from
• context - (optional) the object representing the session state

Example:

const client = new Wit({accessToken: 'MY_TOKEN'});
client.message('what is the weather in London?', {})
.then((data) => {
  console.log('Yay, got Wit.ai response: ' + JSON.stringify(data));
})
.catch(console.error);

interactive

Starts an interactive conversation with your bot.

Example:

const {interactive} = require('node-wit');
interactive(client);

See the docs for more information.

.runActions()

DEPRECATED See our blog post for a migration plan.

A higher-level method to the Wit converse API. runActions resets the last turn on new messages and errors.

Takes the following parameters:

• sessionId - a unique identifier describing the user session
• message - the text received from the user
• context - the object representing the session state
• maxSteps - (optional) the maximum number of actions to execute (defaults to 5)

Example:

const sessionId = 'my-user-session-42';
const context0 = {};
client.runActions(sessionId, 'what is the weather in London?', context0)
.then((context1) => {
  console.log('The session state is now: ' + JSON.stringify(context1));
  return client.runActions(sessionId, 'and in Brussels?', context1);
})
.then((context2) => {
  console.log('The session state is now: ' + JSON.stringify(context2));
})
.catch((e) => {
  console.log('Oops! Got an error: ' + e);
});

See ./examples/messenger.js for a full-fledged example

.converse()

DEPRECATED See our blog post for a migration plan.

The low-level Wit converse API.

Takes the following parameters:

• sessionId - a unique identifier describing the user session
• message - the text received from the user
• context - the object representing the session state
• reset - (optional) whether to reset the last turn

Example:

client.converse('my-user-session-42', 'what is the weather in London?', {})
.then((data) => {
  console.log('Yay, got Wit.ai response: ' + JSON.stringify(data));
})
.catch(console.error);

Changing the API version

On 2016, May 11th, the /message API was updated to reflect the new Bot Engine model: intent are now entities. We updated the SDK to the latest version: 20160516. You can target a specific version by passing the apiVersion parameter when creating the Wit object.

{
  "msg_id" : "e86468e5-b9e8-4645-95ce-b41a66fda88d",
  "_text" : "hello",
  "entities" : {
    "intent" : [ {
      "confidence" : 0.9753469589149633,
      "value" : "greetings"
    } ]
  }
}

Version prior to 20160511 will return the old format:

{
  "msg_id" : "722fc79b-725c-4ca1-8029-b7f57ff88f54",
  "_text" : "hello",
  "outcomes" : [ {
    "_text" : "hello",
    "confidence" : null,
    "intent" : "default_intent",
    "entities" : {
      "intent" : [ {
        "confidence" : 0.9753469589149633,
        "value" : "greetings"
      } ]
    }
  } ],
  "WARNING" : "DEPRECATED"
}

Running tests

1. Create a new app in wit.ai web console using tests/wit-ai-app-for-tests.zip
2. Copy the Server Access Token from app settings
3. Run WIT_TOKEN=XXX npm test, where XXX is the Server Access Token