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How SUSI AI Searches the Web For You

SUSI is now capable of performing web search to answer your queries. When SUSI doesn’t know how to answer your queries, it performs a web search on the client side and displays all the results as horizontally swipeable tiles with each tile giving a brief description and also providing a link to the relevant source.

Lets visit SUSI WebChat and try it out.

Query : Search for Google
Response : <Web Search Results>

How does SUSI know when to perform a websearch?

It uses action types to identify if a web search is to be performed or not. The API Response is parsed to check for the action types and if a websearch action type is present, then an API call is made using the duckduckgo api with the relevant query and the results are displayed as tiles with :

  • Category : The Topic related to the given query
  • Text : The result from the websearch
  • Image : Image related to the query if present
  • Link : A url redirecting to the relevant source

Parsing the actions :

Let us look at the API response for a query.

Sample Query: search for google

Response: <API Response>

"actions": [
  {
    "type": "answer",
    "expression": "Here is a web search result:"
  },
  {
    "type": "websearch",
    "query": "google"
  }
]

Note: The API Response has been trimmed to show only the relevant content

We find a websearch type action and the query to be searched as google . So we now make a API call using duckduckgo api to get our websearch results.

API Call Format : api.duckduckgo.com/?q={query}&format=json

API Call for query google : http://api.duckduckgo.com/?q=google&format=json

And from the duckduckgo API response we generate our websearch tiles showing relevant data using the fields present in each object.

This is the sample object from duckduckgo API response under the RelatedTopics , which we use to create our websearch result tiles.

{
  "Result": "<a href=\"https:\/\/duckduckgo.com\/Google\">Google<\/a> An American multinational technology company specializing in Internet-related services and...",
  "Icon": {
    "URL": "https:\/\/duckduckgo.com\/i\/8f85c93f.png",
    "Height": "",
    "Width": ""
  },
  "FirstURL": "https:\/\/duckduckgo.com\/Google",
  "Text": "Google An American multinational technology company specializing in Internet-related services and..."
},

Let us look at the code for querying data from the API

if (actions.indexOf('websearch')>=0) {

  let actionIndex = actions.indexOf('websearch');
  let query = response.answers[0].actions[actionIndex].query;

  $.ajax({
    url: 'http://api.duckduckgo.com/?format=json&q='+query,
    dataType: 'jsonp',
    crossDomain: true,
    timeout: 3000,
    async: false,

    success: function (data) {
      receivedMessage.websearchresults = data.RelatedTopics;

      if(data.AbstractText){
        let abstractTile = {
          Text:'',
          FirstURL:'',
          Icon:{URL:''},
        }
        abstractTile.Text = data.AbstractText;
        abstractTile.FirstURL = data.AbstractURL;
        abstractTile.Icon.URL = data.Image;
        receivedMessage.websearchresults.unshift(abstractTile);
    }

    let message =  ChatMessageUtils.getSUSIMessageData(
receivedMessage, currentThreadID);

    ChatAppDispatcher.dispatch({
      type: ActionTypes.CREATE_SUSI_MESSAGE,
      message
    });
  },

    error: function(errorThrown) {
      console.log(errorThrown);
      receivedMessage.text = 'Please check your internet connection';
    }

  });

}

Here, from the actions object, we get the query needed to search the web. We then make a ajax call using that query to the duckduckgo API. If the API call succeeds then we collect the required data to create tiles as array of objects and store it as websearchresults. and dispatch the message with the websearchresults which gets reflected in the message store and when passed to the components we use it to create the result tiles.

<MuiThemeProvider>
  <Paper zDepth={0} className='tile'>
    <a rel='noopener noreferrer'
    href={tile.link} target='_blank'
    className='tile-anchor'>
    {tile.icon &&
    (<Paper className='tile-img-container'>
      <img src={tile.icon}
      className='tile-img' alt=''/>
     </Paper>
    )}
  <Paper className='tile-text'>
    <p className='tile-title'>
      <strong>
        {processText(tile.title,'websearch-rss')}
      </strong>
    </p>
    {processText(tile.description,'websearch-rss')}
  </Paper>
  }
  </a>
  </Paper>
</MuiThemeProvider>

We then display the tiles as horizontally swipeable carousel ensuring a good and interactive UX.

React-Slick module was used to implement the horizontal swiping feature.

function renderTiles(tiles){

if(tiles.length === 0){
  let noResultFound = 'NO Results Found';
  return(<center>{noResultFound}</center>);
}

let resultTiles = drawTiles(tiles);

var settings = {
  speed: 500,
  slidesToShow: 3,
  slidesToScroll: 1,
  swipeToSlide:true,
  swipe:true,
  arrows:false
};

return(
    <Slider {...settings}>
      {resultTiles}
    </Slider>
);

}

Here we are handling the corner case when there are no results to display by rendering `NO Results found`. We then have our web search results displayed as swipeable tiles with a image, title, description and link to the source.

This is how SUSI performs web search to respond to user queries ensuring that no query goes unanswered! Don’t forget to swipe left and go through all the results displayed!

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