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Read more about the article Implementing Skill Detail Section in SUSI Android App

Implementing Skill Detail Section in SUSI Android App

SUSI Skills are rules that are defined in SUSI Skill Data repo which are basically the responses SUSI gives to the user queries. When a user queries something from the SUSI Android app, a query to SUSI Server is made which further fetches response from SUSI Skill Data and gives the response to the app. Similarly, when we need to list all skills, an API call is made to server to list all skills. The server then checks the SUSI Skill Data repo for the skills and then return all the required information to the app. Then the app displays all the information about the skill to user. User then can view details of each skill and then interact on the chat interface to use that skill. This process is similar to what SUSI Skill CMS does. The CMS is a skill wiki like interface to view all skills and then edit them. Though the app can not be currently used to edit the skills but it can be used to view them and try them on the chat interface.

API Information

For listing SUSI Skill groups, we have to call on /cms/getGroups.json

This will give you all groups in SUSI model in which skills are present. Current response:

{
  "session": {"identity": {
    "type": "host",
    "name": "14.139.194.24",
    "anonymous": true
  }},
  "accepted": true,
  "groups": [
    "Small Talk",
    "Entertainment",
    "Problem Solving",
    "Knowledge",
    "Assistants",
    "Shopping"
  ],
  "message": "Success: Fetched group list"
}

So, the groups object gives all the groups in which SUSI Skills are located.

Next comes, fetching of skills. For that the endpoint is /cms/getGroups.json?group=GROUP_NAME

Since we want all skills to be fetched, we call this api for every group. So, for example we will be calling http://api.susi.ai/cms/getSkillList.json?group=Entertainment for getting all skills in group “Entertainment”. Similarly for other groups as well.

Sample response of skill:

{
  "accepted": true,
  "model": "general",
  "group": "Shopping",
  "language": "en",
  "skills": {"amazon_shopping": {
    "image": "images/amazon_shopping.png",
    "author_url": "https://github.com/meriki",
    "examples": ["Buy a dress"],
    "developer_privacy_policy": null,
    "author": "Y S Ramya",
    "skill_name": "Shop At Amazon",
    "dynamic_content": true,
    "terms_of_use": null,
    "descriptions": "Searches items on Amazon.com for shopping",
    "skill_rating": null
  }},
  "message": "Success: Fetched skill list",
  "session": {"identity": {
    "type": "host",
    "name": "14.139.194.24",
    "anonymous": true
  }}
}

It gives all details about skills:

  1. image
  2. author_url
  3. examples
  4. developer_privacy_policy
  5. author
  6. skill_name
  7. dynamic_content
  8. terms_of_use
  9. descriptions
  10. skill_rating

Implementation in SUSI Android App

Skill Detail Section UI of Google Assistant

Skill Detail Section UI of SUSI SKill CMS

Skill Detail Section UI of SUSI Android App

The UI of skill detail section in SUSI Android App is the mixture of UI of Skill detail section in Google Assistant ap and SUSI Skill CMS. It displays details of skills in a beautiful manner with horizontal recyclerview used to display the examples.

So, we have to display following details about the skill in Skill Detail Section:

  1. Skill Name
  2. Author Name
  3. Skill Image
  4. Try it Button
  5. Description
  6. Examples
  7. Rating
  8. Content type (Dynamic/Static)
  9. Terms of Use
  10. Developer’s Privacy policy

Let’s see the implementation.

1. Whenever a skill Card View is clicked, showSkillDetailFragment() is called and it opens a new instance of a fragment named SkillDetailsFragment which shows details of the skill. We have to provide necessary information while starting the fragment. This information is passed as a Serializable.

fun showSkillDetailFragment(skillData: SkillData, skillGroup: String) {
   val skillDetailsFragment = SkillDetailsFragment.newInstance(skillData,skillGroup)
   (context as SkillsActivity).fragmentManager.beginTransaction()
           .replace(R.id.fragment_container, skillDetailsFragment)
           .commit()
}

2.  The data which was passed as a Serializeable object is now casted back to the required form and a method to set up the UI is called.

companion object {
   val SKILL_KEY = "skill_key"
   val SKILL_GROUP = "skill_group"
   fun newInstance(skillData: SkillData, skillGroup: String): SkillDetailsFragment {
       val fragment = SkillDetailsFragment()
       val bundle = Bundle()
       bundle.putSerializable(SKILL_KEY, skillData as Serializable)
       bundle.putString(SKILL_GROUP, skillGroup)
       fragment.arguments = bundle

       return fragment
   }
}

override fun onCreateView(inflater: LayoutInflater, container: ViewGroup?, savedInstanceState: Bundle?): View {
   skillData = arguments.getSerializable(
           SKILL_KEY) as SkillData
   skillGroup = arguments.getString(SKILL_GROUP)
   return inflater.inflate(R.layout.fragment_skill_details, container, false)
}

override fun onViewCreated(view: View?, savedInstanceState: Bundle?) {
   setupUI()
   super.onViewCreated(view, savedInstanceState)
}

3. The setupUI() method then calls separate method for setting every part of the UI like image, name etc.

fun setupUI() {
   setImage()
   setName()
   setAuthor()
   setTryButton()
   setDescription()
   setExamples()
   setRating()
   setDynamicContent()
   setPolicy()
   setTerms()
}

4. One example of setting a part of the UI is setting Author name. It checks if AuthorName is null or not. After that it anchors author’s github account link with his/her name.

fun setAuthor() {
   skill_detail_author.text = "Author : ${activity.getString(R.string.no_skill_author)}"
   if(skillData.author != null && !skillData.author.isEmpty()){
       if(skillData.authorUrl == null || skillData.authorUrl.isEmpty())
           skill_detail_author.text = "Author : ${skillData.skillName}"
       else {
           skill_detail_author.linksClickable = true
           skill_detail_author.movementMethod = LinkMovementMethod.getInstance()
           if (android.os.Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.N) {
               skill_detail_author.text = Html.fromHtml("Author : <a href=\"${skillData.authorUrl}\">${skillData.author}</a>", Html.FROM_HTML_MODE_COMPACT)
           } else {
               skill_detail_author.text = Html.fromHtml("Author : <a href=\"${skillData.authorUrl}\">${skillData.author}</a>")
           }
       }
   }
}

Summary

So, this blog talked about how the Skill detail section in SUSI Android App is implemented. This included how a network call is made, logic for making different network calls, making a horizontal recyclerview for displaying examples. So, If you are looking forward to contribute to SUSI Android App, this can help you a little. But if not so, this may also help you in understanding and how you can implement horizontal recyclerview similar to Google Play Store.

References

  1. To know about servlets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_servlet
  2. To see how to implement one https://www.javatpoint.com/servlet-tutorial
  3. To see how to make network calls in android using Retrofit https://guides.codepath.com/android/Consuming-APIs-with-Retrofit
  4. To see how to implement custom RecyclerView Adapter https://www.survivingwithandroid.com/2016/09/android-recyclerview-tutorial.html
Continue ReadingImplementing Skill Detail Section in SUSI Android App
Read more about the article Link Preview Service from SUSI Server

Link Preview Service from SUSI Server

 SUSI Webchat, SUSI Android app, SUSI iOS app are various SUSI clients which depend on response from SUSI Server. The most common response of SUSI Server is in form of links. Clients usually need to show the preview of the links to the user. This preview may include featured image, description and the title of the link.  Clients show this information by using various 3rd party APIs and libraries. We planned to create an API endpoint for this on SUSI Server to give the preview of the link. This service is called LinkPreviewService.
String url = post.get("url", "");
        if(url==null || url.isEmpty()){
            jsonObject.put("message","URL Not given");
            jsonObject.put("accepted",false);
            return new ServiceResponse(jsonObject);
        }

This API Endpoint accept only 1 get parameter which is the URL whose preview is to be shown.

Here we also check if no parameter or wrong URL parameter was sent. If that was the the case then we return an error message to the user.

 SourceContent sourceContent =     TextCrawler.scrape(url,3);
        if (sourceContent.getImages() != null) jsonObject.put("image", sourceContent.getImages().get(0));
        if (sourceContent.getDescription() != null) jsonObject.put("descriptionShort", sourceContent.getDescription());
        if(sourceContent.getTitle()!=null)jsonObject.put("title", sourceContent.getTitle());
        jsonObject.put("accepted",true);
        return new ServiceResponse(jsonObject);
    }

The TextCrawler function accept two parameters. One is the url of the website which is to be scraped for the preview data and the other is depth. To get the images, description and title there are methods built in. Here we just call those methods and set them in our JSON Object.

 private String htmlDecode(String content) {
        return Jsoup.parse(content).text();
    }

Text Crawler is based on Jsoup. Jsoup is a java library that is used to scrape HTML pages.

To get anything from Jsoup we need to decode the content of HTML to Text.

public List<String> getImages(Document document, int imageQuantity) {
        Elements media = document.select("[src]");
        while(var5.hasNext()) {
            Element srcElement = (Element)var5.next();
            if(srcElement.tagName().equals("img")) {
                ((List)matches).add(srcElement.attr("abs:src"));
            }
        }

 The getImages method takes the HTML document from the JSoup and find the image tags in that. We have given the imageQuantity parameter in the function, so accordingly it returns the src attribute of the first n images it find.

This API Endpoint can be seen working on

http://127.0.0.1:4000/susi/linkPreview.json?url=<ANY URL>

A real working example of this endpoint would be http://api.susi.ai/susi/linkPreview.json?url=https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/23/dear-tech-dudes-stop-being-such-idiots-about-women/

Resources:

Web Crawlers: https://www.promptcloud.com/data-scraping-vs-data-crawling/

JSoup: https://jsoup.org/

JSoup Api Docs: https://jsoup.org/apidocs/

Parsing HTML with JSoup: http://www.baeldung.com/java-with-jsoup

Continue ReadingLink Preview Service from SUSI Server
Read more about the article Fetching Images for RSS Responses in SUSI Web Chat

Fetching Images for RSS Responses in SUSI Web Chat

Initially, SUSI Web Chat rendered RSS action type responses like this:

The response from the server initially only contained

  • Title
  • Description
  • Link

We needed to improvise the web search & RSS results display and also add images for the results.

The web search & RSS results are now rendered as :

How was this implemented?

SUSI AI uses Yacy to fetchRSSs feeds. Firstly the server using the console process to return the RSS feeds from Yacy needs to be configured to return images too.

"yacy":{
  "example":"http://127.0.0.1:4000/susi/console.json?q=%22SELECT%20title,%20link%20FROM%20yacy%20WHERE%20query=%27java%27;%22",
  "url":"http://yacy.searchlab.eu/solr/select?wt=yjson&q=",
  "test":"java",
  "parser":"json",
  "path":"$.channels[0].items",
  "license":""
}

In a console process, we provide the URL needed to fetch data from, the query parameter needed to be passed to the URL and the path to look for the answer in the API response.

  • url = <url>   – the URL to the remote JSON service which will be used to retrieve information. It must contain a $query$ string.
  • test = <parameter> – the parameter that will replace the $query$ string inside the given URL. It is required to test the service.

Here the URL used is :

http://yacy.searchlab.eu/solr/select?wt=yjson&q=QUERY

To include images in RSS action responses, we need to parse the images also from the Yacy response. For this, we need to add `image` in the selection rule while calling the console process

"process":[
  {
    "type":"console",
    "expression":"SELECT title,description,link FROM yacy WHERE query='$1$';"
  }
]

Now the response from the server for RSS action type will also include `image` along with title, description, and link. An example response for the query `Google` :

{
  "title": "Terms of Service | Google Analytics \u2013 Google",
  "description": "Read Google Analytics terms of service.",
  "link": "http://www.google.com/analytics/terms/",
  "image":   "https://www.google.com/images/branding/googlelogo/1x/googlelogo_color_116x41dp.png",
}

However, the results at times, do not contain images because there are none stored in the index. This may happen if the result comes from p2p transmission within Yacy where no images are transmitted. So in cases where images are not returned by the server, we use the link preview service to preview the link and fetch the image.

The endpoint for previewing the link is :

BASE_URL+'/susi/linkPreview.json?url=URL'

On the client side, we first search the response for data objects with images in API actions. And the amongst the remaining data objects in answers[0].data, we preview the link to fetch image keeping a check on the count. This needs to be performed for processing the history cognitions too.To preview the remaining links in a loop, we cannot make ajax calls directly in a loop. To handle this, nested ajax calls are made using the function previewURLForImage() where we loop through the remaining links and on the success we decrement the count and call previewURLForImage() on the next link and on error we try previewURLForImage() on the next link without decrementing the count.

success: function (rssResponse) {
  if(rssResponse.accepted){
    respData.image = rssResponse.image;
    respData.descriptionShort = rssResponse.descriptionShort;
    receivedMessage.rssResults.push(respData);
  }
  if(receivedMessage.rssResults.length === count ||
    j === remainingDataIndices.length - 1){
    let message = ChatMessageUtils.getSUSIMessageData(receivedMessage, currentThreadID);
    ChatAppDispatcher.dispatch({
      type: ActionTypes.CREATE_SUSI_MESSAGE,
      message
    });
  }
  else{
    j+=1;
    previewURLForImage(receivedMessage,currentThreadID,
BASE_URL,data,count,remainingDataIndices,j);
  }
},

And we store the results as rssResults which are used in MessageListItems to fetch the data and render. The nested calling of previewURLForImage() ends when we have the required count of results or we have finished trying all links for previewing images. We then dispatch the message to the message store. We now improvise the UI. I used Material UI Cards to display the results and for the carousel like display, react-slick.

<Card className={cardClass} key={i} onClick={() => {
  window.open(tile.link,'_blank')
}}>
  {tile.image &&
    (
      <CardMedia>
        <img src={tile.image} alt="" className='card-img'/>
      </CardMedia>
    )
  }
  <CardTitle title={tile.title} titleStyle={titleStyle}/>
  <CardText>
    <div className='card-text'>{cardText}</div>
    <div className='card-url'>{urlDomain(tile.link)}</div>
  </CardText>
</Card>

We used the full width of the message section to display the results by not wrapping the result in message-list-item class. The entire card is hyperlinked to the link. Along with title and description, the URL info is also shown at the bottom right. To get the domain name from the link, urlDomain() function is used which makes use of the HTML anchor tag to get the domain info.

function urlDomain(data) {
  var a = document.createElement('a');
  a.href = data;
  return a.hostname;
}

To prevent stretching of images we use `object-fit: contain;` to make the images fit the image container and align it to the middle.

We finally have our RSS results with images and an improvised UI. The complete code can be found at SUSI WebChat Repo. Feel free to contribute

Resources
Continue ReadingFetching Images for RSS Responses in SUSI Web Chat
Read more about the article Implementing Text To Speech Settings in SUSI WebChat

Implementing Text To Speech Settings in SUSI WebChat

SUSI Web Chat has Text to Speech (TTS) Feature where it gives voice replies for user queries. The Text to Speech functionality was added using Speech Synthesis Feature of the Web Speech API. The Text to Speech Settings were added to customise the speech output by controlling features like :

  1. Language
  2. Rate
  3. Pitch

Let us visit SUSI Web Chat and try it out.

First, ensure that the settings have SpeechOutput or SpeechOutputAlways enabled. Then click on the Mic button and ask a query. SUSI responds to your query with a voice reply.

To control the Speech Output, visit Text To Speech Settings in the /settings route.

First, let us look at the language settings. The drop down list for Language is populated when the app is initialised. speechSynthesis.onvoiceschanged function is triggered when the app loads initially. There we call speechSynthesis.getVoices() to get the voice list of all the languages currently supported by that particular browser. We store this in MessageStore using ActionTypes.INIT_TTS_VOICES action type.

window.speechSynthesis.onvoiceschanged = function () {
  if (!MessageStore.getTTSInitStatus()) {
    var speechSynthesisVoices = speechSynthesis.getVoices();
    Actions.getTTSLangText(speechSynthesisVoices);
    Actions.initialiseTTSVoices(speechSynthesisVoices);
  }
};

We also get the translated text for every language present in the voice list for the text – `This is an example of speech synthesis` using google translate API. This is called initially for all the languages and is stored as translatedText attribute in the voice list for each element. This is later used when the user wants to listen to an example of speech output for a selected language, rate and pitch.

https://translate.googleapis.com/translate_a/single?client=gtx&sl=en-US&tl=TARGET_LANGUAGE_CODE&dt=t&q=TEXT_TO_BE_TRANSLATED

When the user visits the Text To Speech Settings, then the voice list stored in the MessageStore is retrieved and the drop down menu for Language is populated. The default language is fetched from UserPreferencesStore and the default language is accordingly highlighted in the dropdown. The list is parsed and populated as a drop down using populateVoiceList() function.

let voiceMenu = voices.map((voice,index) => {
  if(voice.translatedText === null){
    voice.translatedText = this.speechSynthesisExample;
  }
  langCodes.push(voice.lang);
  return(
    <MenuItem value={voice.lang}
              key={index}
              primaryText={voice.name+' ('+voice.lang+')'} />
  );
});

The language selected using this dropdown is only used as the language for the speech output when the server doesn’t specify the language in its response and the browser language is undefined. We then create sliders using Material UI for adjusting speech rate and pitch. 

<h4 style={{'marginBottom':'0px'}}><Translate text="Speech Rate"/></h4>
<Slider
  min={0.5}
  max={2}
  value={this.state.rate}
  onChange={this.handleRate} />

The range for the sliders is :

  • Rate : 0.5 – 2
  • Pitch : 0 – 2

The default value for both rate and pitch is 1. We create a controlled slider saving the values in state and using onChange function to record change in values. The Reset buttons can be used to reset the rate and pitch values respectively to their default values. Once the language, rate and pitch values have been selected we can click on `Play a short demonstration of speech synthesis`  to listen to a voice reply with the chosen settings.

{ this.state.playExample &&
  (
    <VoicePlayer
       play={this.state.play}
       text={voiceOutput.voiceText}
       rate={this.state.rate}
       pitch={this.state.pitch}
       lang={this.state.ttsLanguage}
       onStart={this.onStart}
       onEnd={this.onEnd}
    />
  )
}

We use the VoicePlayer by passing the required props to get the speech output. onStart and onEnd functions are triggered at the beginning and ending of the speech synthesis and are used to control the state from the parent component. Chosen language, rate, pitch and translated text are passed as props to VoicePlayer which creates a new SpeechSynthesisUtterance() with the passed props and plays the speech output.

On saving these settings and then using the Mic button to get voice replies we see that the voice output is controlled according to the selected settings.

Finally, we have to store the selected settings on the server and ensure that these are pulled when the app is initialized. The format in which these settings are stored in the server is :

Speech Rate

- Used to control rate of speech output.
- SETTING_NAME :  `speechRate`
- SETTING_VALUE : `0.5 - 2`
- DEFAULT_VALUE : `1`
 
Speech Pitch

- Used to control pitch of speech output.
- SETTING_NAME :  `speechPitch`
- SETTING_VALUE : `0 - 2`
- DEFAULT_VALUE : `1`
 
TTS Language

- Used to set the language for Text-To-Speech used when the response from server doesnt specify language and the browser language is also undefined.
- SETTING_NAME :  `ttsLanguage`
- SETTING_VALUE : `Language Code (string)`
- DEFAULT_VALUE : `en-US`

This is how the Text To Speech Settings were implemented in SUSI Web Chat. The complete code can be found at SUSI Web Chat Repository.

PS: To test whether your browser supports Text To Speech, open your browser console and try the following :

  • var msg = new SpeechSynthesisUtterance(‘Hello World’);
  • window.speechSynthesis.speak(msg)

If you get a speech output then the Web API Speech Synthesis is supported by your browser and Text To Speech features of SUSI Web Chat will work. The Web Speech API has support for all latest Chrome browsers as mentioned in the Web Speech API Mozilla docs.However there are few bugs with some Chromium versions please check out more on how to fix them locally here in this link.

Resources:

 

 

Continue ReadingImplementing Text To Speech Settings in SUSI WebChat
Read more about the article Implementing Change Password Feature in SUSI Android App using Custom Dialogs

Implementing Change Password Feature in SUSI Android App using Custom Dialogs

Recently a new servlet was implemented on the SUSI Server about changing the password of the logged in user. This feature comes in handy to avoid unauthorized usage of the SUSI Account. Almost all the online platforms have this feature to change the password to avoid notorious user to unethical use someone else’s account. In SUSI Android app this new API was used with a nice UI to change the password of the user. The process is very simple and easy to grasp. This blog will try to cover the API information and implementation of the Change Password feature in the android client.

API Information

For changing the password of SUSI Account of the user, we have to call on  /aaa/changepassword.json

We have to provide three parameters along with this api call:

  1. changepassword:  Email of user (type string) using which user is logged in.
  2. password:  Old password (type string with min length of 6) of the user.
  3. newpassword: New password (type string with min length of 6) of the user.
  4. access_token: An encrypted access_token indicating user is logged in.

Sample Response (Success)

{
  "session": {"identity": {
    "type": "email",
    "name": "YOUR_EMAIL_ADDRESS",
    "anonymous": false
  }},
  "accepted": true,
  "message": "Your password has been changed!"
}

Error Response (Failure). This happens when user is not logged in:

HTTP ERROR 401
Problem accessing /aaa/changepassword.json. Reason:
   Base user role not sufficient. Your base user role is 'ANONYMOUS', your user role is 'anonymous'

Implementation in SUSI Android App

The change password option is located in Settings Activity and displayed only when user is logged in. So, if a logged in user wants to change the password of his/her SUSI AI account, he/she can simply go to the Settings and click on the option. Clicking on the options open up a dialog box with 3 input layouts for:

  1. Current Password
  2. New Password
  3. Confirm New Password

So, user can simply add these three inputs and click “Ok”. This will change the password of their account. Let’s see some code explanation.

  1. When user clicks on the “reset password” option from the settings, the showResetPasswordAlert() method is called which displays the dialog. And when user clicks on the “OK” button the resetPassword method() in the presenter is called passing input from the three input layout as parameters.

settingsPresenter.resetPassword(password.editText?.text.toString(), newPassword.editText?.text.toString(), conPassword.editText?.text.toString())

fun showResetPasswordAlert() {
   val builder = AlertDialog.Builder(activity)
   val resetPasswordView = activity.layoutInflater.inflate(R.layout.alert_reset_password, null)
   password = resetPasswordView.findViewById(R.id.password) as TextInputLayout
   newPassword = resetPasswordView.findViewById(R.id.newpassword) as TextInputLayout
   conPassword = resetPasswordView.findViewById(R.id.confirmpassword) as TextInputLayout
   builder.setView(resetPasswordView)
   builder.setTitle(Constant.CHANGE_PASSWORD)
           .setCancelable(false)
           .setNegativeButton(Constant.CANCEL, null)
           .setPositiveButton(getString(R.string.ok), null)
   resetPasswordAlert = builder.create()
   resetPasswordAlert.show()
   setupPasswordWatcher()
   resetPasswordAlert.getButton(AlertDialog.BUTTON_POSITIVE)?.setOnClickListener {
       settingsPresenter.resetPassword(password.editText?.text.toString(), newPassword.editText?.text.toString(), conPassword.editText?.text.toString())
   }
}
  1. In the resetPassword method, all details about the passwords are checked like:
  1. If passwords are not empty.
  2. If passwords’ lengths are greater than 6.
  3. If new password and confirmation new password matches

   

When all the conditions are satisfied and all the inputs are valid, resetPassword() in model is called which makes network call to change password of the user.

settingModel.resetPassword(password,newPassword,this)

override fun resetPassword(password: String, newPassword: String, conPassword: String) {
   if (password.isEmpty()) {
       settingView?.invalidCredentials(true, Constant.PASSWORD)
       return
   }
   if (newPassword.isEmpty()) {
       settingView?.invalidCredentials(true, Constant.NEW_PASSWORD)
       return
   }
   if (conPassword.isEmpty()) {
       settingView?.invalidCredentials(true, Constant.CONFIRM_PASSWORD)
       return
   }

   if (!CredentialHelper.isPasswordValid(newPassword)) {
       settingView?.passwordInvalid(Constant.NEW_PASSWORD)
       return
   }

   if (newPassword != conPassword) {
       settingView?.invalidCredentials(false, Constant.NEW_PASSWORD)
       return
   }
   settingModel.resetPassword(password,newPassword,this)
}

Summary

So, this blog talked about how the Change Password feature is implemented in SUSI Android App. This included how a network call is made, logic for making network, information about API, making dialogs with custom UI, etc. So, If you are looking forward to contribute to SUSI Android App, this can help you a little. But if not so, this may also help you in understanding and how you can implement a dialog box with custom UI.

References

  1. To know about servlets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_servlet
  2. To see how to implement one https://www.javatpoint.com/servlet-tutorial
  3. To see how to make network calls in android using Retrofit https://guides.codepath.com/android/Consuming-APIs-with-Retrofit
  4. Official docs for displaying dialog https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/dialogs.html
  5. Implementing dialog boxes with custom UI https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13341560/how-to-create-a-custom-dialog-box-in-android
  6. Pull Request for API reference: https://github.com/fossasia/susi_server/pull/352
Continue ReadingImplementing Change Password Feature in SUSI Android App using Custom Dialogs
Read more about the article Making GUI for SUSI Linux with PyGTK

Making GUI for SUSI Linux with PyGTK

SUSI Linux app provides access to SUSI on Linux distributions on desktop as well as hardware devices like Raspberry Pi. It started off as a headless client but we decided to add a minimalist GUI to SUSI Linux for performing login and configuring settings. Since, SUSI Linux is a Python App, it was desirable to use a GUI Framework compatible with Python. Many popular GUI frameworks now provide bindings for Python. Some popular available choices are:

wxPython: wxPython is a Python GUI framework based on wxWidgets, a cross-platform GUI library written in C++. In addition to the standard dialogs, it includes a 2D path drawing API, dockable windows, support for many file formats and both text-editing and word-processing widgets. wxPython though mainly support Python 2 as programming language.

PyQT: Qt is a multi-licensed cross-platform framework written in C++. Qt needs a commercial licence for use but if application is completely Open Source, community license can be used. Qt is an excellent choice for GUIs and many applications are based on it.

PyGTK / PyGObject: PyGObject is a Python module that lets you write GUI applications in GTK+. It provides bindings to GObject, a cross platform C library. GTK+ applications are natively supported in most distros and you do not need to install any other development tools for developing with PyGTK.

Comparing all these frameworks, PyGTK was found to meet our needs very well. To make UIs in PyGTK, you have a WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) editor called Glade. Though you can design whole UI programmatically, it is always convenient to use an editor like Glade to simplify the creation and styling of widgets.

To create a UI, you need to install Glade in your specific distribution. After that open glade, and add a Top Level container Window or AppWindow to your app.

Once that is done, you may pick from the available Layout Managers. We are using BoxLayout Manager in SUSI Linux GUIs. Once that is done, add your widgets to the Application Window using Drag and Drop.

Properties of widgets are available on the right panel. Edit your widget properties to give them meaningful IDs so we can address them later in our code. GTK also provides Signals for signaling about a events associated with the widgets. Open the Signals tab in the Widget properties pane. Then, you need to write name of the signal handler for the events associated with Widgets. A signal handler is a function that is fired upon the occurrence of the associated event. For example, we have signals like text_changed in Text Entry boxes, and clicked for Button.

After completing the design of GUI, we can address the .glade file of the UI we just created in the Python code. We can do this using the following snippet.

import gi
gi.require_version('Gtk', '3.0')
from gi.repository import Gtk

builder = Gtk.Builder()
builder.add_from_file("glade_files/signin.glade")

You can reference each widget from the Glade file using its ID like below.

email_field = builder.get_object("email_field")

Now, to handle all the declared signals in the Glade file, we need to make a Handler class. In this class, you need to define call the valid callbacks for your signals. On the occurrence of the signal, respective callback is fired.

class Handler:

   def onDeleteWindow(self, *args):
       Gtk.main_quit(*args)

   def signInButtonClicked(self, *args):
       # implementation

   def input_changed(self, *args):
       # implementation

We may associate a handler function to more than one Signal. For that, we just need to specify the respective function in both the Signals.

Now, we need to connect this Handler to builder signals. This can be done using the following line.

builder.connect_signals(Handler())

Now, we can show our window using the following lines.

window.show_all()
Gtk.main()

The above lines displays the window and start the Gtk main loop. The script waits on the Gtk main loop. The app may be quitted using the Gtk.main_quit() call. Running this script shows the Login Screen of our app like below.

Resources:

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Read more about the article Modifying SUSI Skills using SUSI Skill CMS

Modifying SUSI Skills using SUSI Skill CMS

SUSI Skill CMS is a complete solution right from creating a skill to modifying the skill. The skills in SUSI are well synced with the remote repository and can be completely modified using the Edit Skill feature of SUSI Skill CMS. Here’s how to Modify a Skill.

  1. Sign Up/Login to the website using your credentials in skills.susi.ai
  2. Choose the SKill which you want to edit and click on the pencil icon.
  3. The following screen allows editing the skill. One can change the Group, Language, Skill Name, Image and the content as well.
  4. After making the changes the commit message can be added to Save the changes.

To achieve the above steps we require the following API Endpoints of the SUSI Server.

  1. http://api.susi.ai/cms/getSkillMetadata.json – This gives us the meta data which populates the various Skill Content, Image, Author etc.
  2. http://api.susi.ai/cms/getAllLanguages.json – This gives us all the languages of a Skill Group.
  3. http://api.susi.ai/cms/getGroups.json – This gives us all the list of Skill Groups whether Knowledge, Entertainment, Smalltalk etc.

Now since we have all the APIs in place we make the following AJAX calls to update the Skill Process.

  1. Since we are detecting changes in all the fields (Group Value, Skill Name, Language Value, Image Value, Commit Message, Content changes and the format of the content), the AJAX call can only be sent when there is a change in the PR and there is no null or undefined value in them. For that, we make various form validations. They are as follows.
    1. We first detect whether the User is in a logged in state.
if (!cookies.get('loggedIn')) {
            notification.open({
                message: 'Not logged In',
                description: 'Please login and then try to create/edit a skill',
                icon: <Icon type="close-circle" style={{ color: '#f44336' }} />,
            });
        }
  1. We check whether the image uploaded matches the format of the Skill image to be stored which is ::image images/imageName.png
if (!new RegExp(/images\/\w+\.\w+/g).test(this.state.imageUrl)) {
            notification.open({
                message: 'Error Processing your Request',
                description: 'image must be in format of images/imageName.jpg',
                icon: <Icon type="close-circle" style={{ color: '#f44336' }} />,
            });
        }
  1. We check if the commit message is not null and notify the user if he forgot to add a message.
if (this.state.commitMessage === null) {
            notification.open({
                message: 'Please make some changes to save the Skill',
                icon: <Icon type="close-circle" style={{ color: '#f44336' }} />,
            });
        }
  1. We also check whether the old values of the skill are completely similar to the new ones, in this case, we do not send the request.
if (toldValues===newValues {
            notification.open({
                message: 'Please make some changes to save the Skill',
                icon: <Icon type="close-circle" style={{ color: '#f44336' }} />,
            });
        }

To check out the complete code, go to this link.

  1. Next, if the above validations are successful, we send a POST request to the server and show the notification to the user accordingly, whether the changes to the Skill Data have been updated or not. Here’s the AJAX call snippet.
// create a form object
let form = new FormData();       
/* Append the following fields from the Skill Component:- OldModel, OldLanguage, OldSkill, NewModel, NewGroup, NewLanguage, NewSkill, changelog, content, imageChanged, old_image_name, new_image_name, image_name_changed, access_token */  
if (image_name_changed) {
            file = this.state.file;
            // append file to image
        }

        let settings = {
            "async": true,
            "crossDomain": true,
            "url": "http://api.susi.ai/cms/modifySkill.json",
            "method": "POST",
            "processData": false,
            "contentType": false,
            "mimeType": "multipart/form-data",
            "data": form
        };
        $.ajax(settings)..done(function (response) {
         //show success
        }.
        .fail(function(response){
         // show failure
        }
  1. To verify all this we head to the commits section of the SUSI Skill Data repo and see the changes we made. The changes can be seen here https://github.com/fossasia/susi_skill_data/commits/master 

Resources

  1. AJAX POST Request – https://api.jquery.com/jquery.post/ 
  2. Material UI – http://material-ui.com 
  3. Notifications – http://www.material-ui.com/#/components/notification 
Continue ReadingModifying SUSI Skills using SUSI Skill CMS
Read more about the article API to List All Users on SUSI.AI

API to List All Users on SUSI.AI

In this blog, I discuss how the SUSI server helps in listing out all the users registered on it. The only role Susi server plays is, Whenever it receives a request at 

http://api.susi.ai/aaa/getUsers.json

The server evaluate the parameters in the request, validates them and notify the user accordingly. API needs 2 parameters, out of which access-token is a necessary. 2nd parameter has to be one from the given list :

Parameter Data type

  • getPageCount boolean
  • GetUserCount boolean
  • Page integer

On the basis of this 2nd parameter, server gets to know what does the client with given access-token is requesting. Server evaluates the access-token and validates that if the access token belongs to a user with user role atleast ADMIN, then the request is valid and proceed further with fetching the data in next step. Otherwise, server responds with error code “401” and error message “Base user role not sufficient”. It is advisable for clients that before redirecting users to admin panel or any other service, Please hit

http://api.susi.ai/aaa/showAdminService.json

And check that whether the user logged in is allowed to access the admin panel or not. The servlet /showAdminService.json is quite easy to understand for even those new to programming.

Coming back to our topic, by now, server knows that this client is authorized to access the user list. But what all information does server needs to provide? In response to this request, server encodes following attributes in the JSON Array {which is part of JSON object} and sends it to user :

Attribute Description

  • Name Email-Id of the user
  • Anonymous Is this user anonymous or not
  • User Role User Role of the user
  • Confirmed User has verified account or not
  • Last Login IP Last IP from which login was requested
  • Last Login Time Time when last login request was made
  • Signup Time When did the user signed up

First things first, check if enough parameters are provided or not. If not, respond with error stating “Bad Request. No parameter present”. Otherwise, server does a general iteration which has to be done irrespective of the 2nd parameter.

First of all, get a list of all the authorized users using getAuthorizedClients method of Data Access Object class. This method picks up all the keys from authorized file {which are nothing but identification of clients from which requests are received}. Though it, skips those key which are host addresses (which can not be used to identify a user), it does includes all the email ids {which are obvious identification of users}.

public static Collection<ClientIdentity> getAuthorizedClients() {
		ArrayList<ClientIdentity> i = new ArrayList<>();
		for (String id: authorization.keys()) {
		    if(id.contains("host"))
		        continue;
			i.add(new ClientIdentity(id));
		}
		return i;
	}

In next steps, the collection is converted to suitable data types over which iterations are easy and can be converted to JSON objects and Arrays easily. After this, server evaluates which parameter is requested in the request. Let us pick each case one by one for simplicity.

  1. Client has requested number of pages in the request.

Server finds the size of keysArray {one of the object containing list of all the users}. Basic Mathematics to find out how many pages would be formed if size of each page is 50 elements and total elements are given. 

if (call.get("getPageCount", false) == true) {
            int pageCount = keysArray.length % 50 == 0 ? (keysArray.length / 50) : (keysArray.length / 50) + 1;
            result.put("pageCount", pageCount);
            result.put("accepted", true);
            result.put("message", "Success: Fetched count of pages");
            return new ServiceResponse(result);
        }
  1. User count is requested

Simply return sizeof list which has list of all the users. List to be used can be anyone from authorized, keysArray or any other derivative of authorized collection. Code is quite easy.

  1.      List of users on any page is requested.

Get the page number and after applying unitary maths, you will figure out the elementary of this.

for (Client client : authorized) {
                JSONObject json = client.toJSON();
                ClientIdentity identity = new ClientIdentity(ClientIdentity.Type.email, client.getName());
                Authorization authorization = DAO.getAuthorization(identity);
                UserRole userRole = authorization.getUserRole();
                json.put("userRole", userRole.toString().toLowerCase());
                userList.add(json);
            }

If any other attribute that is required, it’s encoding will be done here.  For example, to get user role of a user, generate a client identity followed by retrieval of user role from it. Encode it and send back to user.

Other details like last login IP, last login time and signup time are also fetched from respective files.

Resources

Continue ReadingAPI to List All Users on SUSI.AI
Read more about the article Change Password for SUSI Accounts Using Access Token and Email-ID

Change Password for SUSI Accounts Using Access Token and Email-ID

In this blog, I discuss how the SUSI server synchronizes with SUSI Accounts and SUSI webchat for users to Change Password. When a user logs in, the clients store the email id of the user along with the access token in cookies. These are stored once the client gets a positive login response from the server. Both of these are required at the time of making the final call. Web clients store the email id and access token in the following way.

cookies.set('loggedIn', loggedIn, { path: '/', maxAge: time });
cookies.set('emailId', email, { path: '/', maxAge: time });

First, the client has to ask the user to enter their current password. A javascript test is used to validate that at least 6 characters must be entered by the user. A similar test is run on the new password. But while confirming the password, client checks whether the user has entered the same password as new password or not. These are just the basics. In next stage (which is achieved only when all the above conditions are met), client encodes the email id (which it gets from cookies), current password, new password and the access token (which it again extracts from cookies).

Now, Client just has to make an ajax request to the server. The response is processed and sent back to the client. Let us now look at PasswordChange Servlet.

The base user role is defined as USER. Initial steps of the servlet are to extract the values form the request it receives. The values extracted from the request are in turn used to make a client’s identity. Before that, server checks if current and new password have same values or not. If not, then server returns a JSON response to user stating, “Your current password and new password matches”. Otherwise, it will continue its control flow as it is. Look at the code snippet below:

if(password.equals(newpassword)){
            result.put("message", "Your current password and new password matches");
            result.put("accepted", false);
            return new ServiceResponse(result);
        }

The reader here may think that they have discovered a hack. But they have not. Why? Because this is just the first step. In later stages, the hash of passwords are used to match to see whether the passwords match or not. To obtain a proper client identity, first a Client credentials object is made with support from the email id which is received in ‘changepassword’ attribute. Using the ClientCredentials object made above, an object of Authentication class is made. This object uses a method defined in its class to return a valid client identity. Using the client identity, value of password hash is extracted from the database along with the salt used to hash the password. If any error is encountered while extracting the client’s password hash value and/or salt value, an error is thrown towards the client, with a message stating “invalid credentials”.

ClientCredential pwcredential = new ClientCredential(ClientCredential.Type.passwd_login, useremail);
            Authentication authentication = DAO.getAuthentication(pwcredential);
            ClientCredential emailcred = new ClientCredential(ClientCredential.Type.passwd_login,
                authentication.getIdentity().getName());
            ClientIdentity identity = authentication.getIdentity();
            String passwordHash;
            String salt;

            try {
                passwordHash = authentication.getString("passwordHash");
                salt = authentication.getString("salt");
            } catch (Throwable e) {
                Log.getLog().info("Invalid password try for user: " + identity.getName() + " from host: " + post.getClientHost() + " : password or salt missing in database");
                result.put("message", "invalid credentials");
                throw new APIException(422, "Invalid credentials");
            }

Using the same salt value that was used earlier, a hash for password entered by the user will be generated which now matches  the previous value. This is the point where the hack you were thinking you found, failed. Again the server throws an error message if user’s credential did not match. Passwords are hard to handle and easy to guess. So here we have used quite many tests before changing them. Users are not allowed to use their email id as a password as well.

If the server is clear on all the above facts and tests, It finally generates a new hashed value of the password received in the parameter ‘newpassword’ and replaces the old hash value with the new one. To notify the clients that password change exited with a success response, it sends a JSON object with message “Your password has been changed!” and accepted flag set to true.

if (DAO.hasAuthentication(emailcred)) {
                    Authentication emailauth = DAO.getAuthentication(emailcred);
                    String newsalt = createRandomString(20);
                    emailauth.remove("passwordHash");
                    emailauth.put("passwordHash", getHash(newpassword, salt));
                    Log.getLog().info("password change for user: " + identity.getName() + " via newpassword from host: " + post.getClientHost());
                    result.put("message", "Your password has been changed!");
                    result.put("accepted", true);
                }

 

Additional Resources:

Wikipedia article: What is DAO?

Continue ReadingChange Password for SUSI Accounts Using Access Token and Email-ID