http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Personality-Forge/94470749322

http://www.personalityforge.com/chatbotapi.php

Nice, Marcus. Seems a little pricey, though.

I added a free option last night that provides 500 messages a month. It’ll work for small projects or development periods when getting ready to launch larger projects.

Hi, Benji, and welcome to chatbots.org!

That’s great news! And I hope you didn’t take my comment the wrong way. Right now, given my current situation, a “cheap” can of soda at Walmart is “a little pricey”.

Hi, Dave. No problem at all - I appreciate the feedback on the rates. I’m trying to figure out how to accomodate both people looking to do interesting small projects and larger companies interested in really generating a lot of traffic and income.

It’ll be a process of feeling out how much API traffic the server can handle. I welcome any feedback on it.

Very cool. Im thinking that this might be just the ticket for the RICH “alter ego” and having an API is perfect. Im diving in

VLG

> http://www.meta-guide.com/home/open-chatbot-standards

FWIW, I believe there will be a huge amount of room in the market for a wide range of diversity in dialog system APIs; just think about the wide range of diversity we have in human personalities.  The “Internet of Things” (aka ” Web of Things”) will drive a great deal of this CUI (Conversational User Interface) demand.  In case you haven’t noticed, the CUI is also rapidly moving into both the home (Smart Homes) and cars (Vehicle Telematics).  For more on this, review my videos on “Open Chatbot Standards for a Modular Chatbot Framework”, at the above link.

I absolutely concur regarding an API driven ‘dataverse’ and at some point would love to go into it in detail with you.
Basically what Im doing with this (hopefully) is setting up what amounts to a “trivial conversation” module. RICH is learning at an exponential rate, and is amazingly conversant for someone who is only 6 weeks old but still spits out the default “I dont see how that relates to the conversation or world news” message as it tries to synthezize a response fairly often.  Ive been looking at setting up an AIML driven “chit chat” module that RICH will default to instead and this API seems well suited to the task. Ive encountered a few stumbling blocks, .net didnt introduce a SHA256 HMAC until version 2 and Ive been back versioning for compatibility, but Ive hacked around that. No real major problems. Kudos to the designer for creating a straightforward API! Have a few “non interface” related questions.
[1] Ive imported a default ‘personality’ for the personality forge module, but it doesnt seem to respond. (trying to beat the learning curve here in the next 24 hours LOL) Does importing a personlality only important the phrases and not the responses? Or should there be a “default” personality after importation?

Vince

actually the answer to that was right in front of me. Great API.

Vince

Hit a snag if anyone has any ideas

This is the JSON that Im sending

and this is the error message that is returned

Thanks in advance

Vince

Vince, I just tried setting it up in Yahoo! Pipes, and am also getting errors….  One thing I can say is that this is the most complex dialog system API I have seen to date.

It seems that the message strings need to be encrypted before you can even return a hash authorization from the system….  Is it only me, or does that seem a little excessive for a “toy” dialog system like PersonalityForge??  I mean if you want people to buy your budget car, then don’t make it as hard to drive as a jet airliner??

Vincent - I sent you an email with the correct JSON string to use in your case. In short, the parameters are split into a message object and a user object, and you had everything in the message object.

Marcus: I’m sorry for your frustration. There is no “hash authorization from the system” step needed. One hits the server once and it sends you the bot’s response if everything is formatted correctly.

What needs to be sent is the apiKey, the url-encoded JSON message object, and the hash, which is calculated on your side using your apiSecret. The error message you’re seeing indicates that the message is not a JSON-encoded object.

I haven’t used Yahoo Pipes before, but the message is a JSON object and the hash needs to be calculated. If Yahoo Pipes is only capable of passing through text parameters straight from a form, then it’s not going to work. I’ll look into Yahoo Pipes later and let you know what I find.

The API is secured, and that’s to protect people who are paying from others using their credentials (and spending their money) in unauthorized ways. It’s the same API security Amazon uses. At any rate, I may be able to create an alternate, simpler (and less secure) API that would work with Yahoo Pipes for the free accounts.

> http://www.personalityforge.com/forum.php?ForumID=110

Benji, thanks for your help with this; and yes, you correctly identified my frustration.  I did post another message on your “Chat Bot API” forum, above link.  (Perhaps your Chat Bot API forum ought to be linked from your “Chat Bot API Documentation”?)  I certainly understand the need for security, especially when money is involved; however, I’ve never seen another API like it.  I don’t have any trouble using the commercial Google APIs in Yahoo! Pipes.

the hash, which is calculated on your side

> HMAC with SHA256. In PHP

Can this be done in any other way?  How would this work with cloud based platforms like Yahoo! Pipes?  I’ve never heard of any remote encoding API; perhaps I could call out to a PHP webhook?

Vince, let me know when you get it working correctly!

Thanks, and again let me congratulate you on creating a truly straight forward well written API. Looking forward to getting my end up and running

Vince