Hello

I’m developing an app (Ionic framework) with a chatbot using AIML (Pandorabots). My project goal: The chatbot should ask questions and the user have to answer. I want to collect these answers and save them into an external file (to send these collected data to a server where another person can analyze the information).
That’s the plan. At the moment I’ve two problems and I hope that you can help me:

1. I want that the chatbot sends the first message (greeting message “Hello and welcome!”), but I’ve no idea how to realize this in AIML…because AIML is based on reacting to an input. Is hard coding the only way?

2. This is my biggest problem…I know that I can store information with the <set> tag and I’ve read that AIML works similar to a database concerning the <set> and <get> tag. But where does AIML store these information? Can I export these information…for example as a XML file?

Best regards
Otto

Hi, Otto, and welcome to chatbots.org!

I have some questions before I can answer your questions. First off, I’m not familiar with the Ionic framework, so I have no idea what language you’re using. I also would like to know if you’re using the actual Pandorabots API, or are using a different AIML interpreter. Knowing these two things will help us to better answer your questions. Thanks.

1 - You can’t do this in AIML alone. Your webpage/app will have to send an intro message, something like “SAY GREETING”
2 - You can’t export the info directly but if you use <learnf>, you can store any learned info into a file called learn.aiml which you can examine.

@Steve: I could also do #2 with Program O, but I would have to write a custom logging function to save transcripts to a file. I expect that this is more along the lines of what Otto is looking for, but I don’t want to commit to that until I hear back.

Thanks for answering! I hope my English is good enough - it’s just “school knowledge”

@Steve: 1 - I will try it this way, thanks. ...and congratulations on the Loebner Prize!

@Dave: Ionic is based on AngularJS and Apache Cordova and uses HTML (with CSS) and JavaScript. It’s a good way to build a hybrid mobile app using web technologies. It’s similar to a “normal” web page.
The mobile app should work online and offline. In offline mode the chatbot can work and save information into a local file; in online mode the app can send this information to the server. This is my idea.
At the moment I’m also searching for an AIML interpreter for HTML or JavaScript. I’ve read about the Pandorabots API, but I don’t know whether it’s a good decision to use it. It needs a permanent internet connection, am I right? I thought I just use the Pandorabots Playground to develop the bot and later I can export all the files to import them into the project. I just need an interpreter for these files. I hope there will be at least one way to do this

Sadly there aren’t many options when it comes to a JavaScript-based AIML interpreter, but the idea of creating one has merit, especially if it were written in AngularJS. If I remember correctly, Angular has the ability to access the filesystem, but only “server-side”, yes? I don’t use that particular framework, so I don’t know for certain. I’m more familiar with jQuery, personally.

You’re correct about Pandorabots requiring a connection with the Internet, so that wouldn’t work in “offline” mode, I’m afraid. Plus, Pandorabots has no functionality for creating files other than using the <learnf> tag, which as Steve pointed out, creates AIML files, which isn’t what you’re looking for, I think.