I would like to allow user A to create a fact/information that is then accessible by all other users of the bot. For example:

userBob: when is our next release?
Lisa: There are no scheduled releases at this time.

userAmy: remember that our next release is on February 8
Lisa: Got it! The next release is February 8

userBob; When is our next release?
Lisa: The next scheduled release is February 8

I know that if I put a Table before a topic that I can create facts like (february_8 time release) that are seen by every user but i have to know this information before hand. What I want is to allow users to add to this universal set of facts.

Stephen G.

you can create an external fact file (^exportfact) that is read before each volley. And write to it when you want to add to it.  It wont work for LARGE numbers of facts because it will eventually slow down. Alternatively you can write a fact to a database (mongo, postgres) and write rules to retrieve appropriately keyed dat.

Thanks Bruce,

It is an honor to hear from you. Chatscript is one of the best thought out tools I have ever worked with!

I thought the solution was going to be to export/import the facts whenever the topic was accessed by a user (perhaps using the ^cs_topic_enter mechanism) I am worried that the import/export would bog things down and even cause lockup/race conditions, with the file. Am I correct in thinking that you still have to import/export even if you have a database hooked up?

Instead of using import/export would it be better to use an RDF tool to save and lookup information?

Using import/export isn’t there a 100 fact limit for a user? Can you ‘swap out’ facts for a user when a topic is started? For instance, when we start talking about ~software-development, I load in all of the software development facts we know and when we talk about ~customers we load in all of the customer facts we know and forget about the ~software-development facts?

Thanks,

Stephen G.

import/export will be slow with LOTS of facts. There wont be race/lockup because server processes only one user at a time (unless you use cs installed on multiple threads with evserver, but a single instance can handle a million conversations a month).  The fact limit on a user is for “save to topic file”, which doesnt apply when you export to file using the function (and you would then want to kill the facts rather than save to user), but you can always change the user save fact limit by assigning a higher value to $cs_factlimit or whatever its called.