Added “table” type action support in SUSI android app

SUSI.AI has many actions supported by it, for eg: answer, anchor, map, piechart, websearch and rss.These actions are a few of those that can be supported in the SUSI.AI android app, but there are many actions implemented on the server side and the web client even has the implementation of how to handle the “table” type response.

The table response is generally a JSON array response with different json objects, where each json object have similar keys, and the actions key in the JSON response has the columns of the table response which are nothing but the keys in the data object of the response.

To implement the table type response in the susi android app a separate file needed to made to parse the table type response, since the keys and values both are required to the display the response. The file ParseTableSusiResponseHelper.kt was made which parsed the JSON object using the Gson converter factory to get the key value of the actions :

“actions”: [

       {

         “columns”: {

           “ingredients”: “Ingredients”,

           “href”: “Instructions Link”,

           “title”: “Recipe”

         },

         “count”: -1,

         “type”: “table”

       }

     ]

 

The inside the columns the keys and the values, both were extracted, values were to displayed in the title of the column and keys used were to extract the values from the “data” object of the response.

The files TableColumn.java, TableData.java are POJO classes that were used for storing the table columns and the data respectively. The TableDatas.java class was used to store the column list and the data list for the table response.

To fetch the table type response from the server a TableSusiResponse.kt file was added that contained serializable entities which were used to map the response values fetched from the server. A variable that contained the data stored in the “answers” key of the response was made of type of an ArrayList of TableAnswers.

@SerializedName(“answers”)
@Expose
val answers: List<TableAnswer> = ArrayList()

The TableAnswer.kt is another file added that contains serializable variables to store values inside the keys of the “answers” object. The actions object shown above is inside the answers object and it was stored in the form of an ArrayList of TableAction.

@SerializedName(“actions”)
@Expose
val actions: List<TableAction> = ArrayList()

Similar to TableAnswer.kt file TableAction.kt file also contains serializable variables that map the values stored in the “actions” object.

In the retrofit service interface SusiService.java a new call was added to fetch the data from the server as follows :

@GET(“/susi/chat.json”)
Call<TableSusiResponse> getTableSusiResponse(@Query(“timezoneOffset”) int timezoneOffset,
                                           @Query(“longitude”) double longitude,
                                           @Query(“latitude”) double latitude,
                                           @Query(“geosource”) String geosource,
                                           @Query(“language”) String language,
                                           @Query(“q”) String query);

Now, after the data was fetched, the table response can be parsed using the Gson converter factory in the ParseTableSusiResponseHelper.kt file. Below is the implementation :

fun parseSusiResponse(response: Response<TableSusiResponse>) {
  try {
      var response1 = Gson().toJson(response)
      var tableresponse = Gson().fromJson(response1, TableBody::class.java)
      for (tableanswer in tableresponse.body.answers) {
          for (answer in tableanswer.actions) {
              var map = answer.columns
              val set = map?.entries
              val iterator = set?.iterator()
              while (iterator?.hasNext().toString().toBoolean()) {
                  val entry = iterator?.next()
                  listColumn.add(entry?.key.toString())
                  listColVal.add(entry?.value.toString())
              }
          }
          val map2 = tableanswer.data
          val iterator2 = map2?.iterator()
          while (iterator2?.hasNext().toString().toBoolean()) {
              val entry2 = iterator2?.next()
              count++;
              for (count in 0..listColumn.size – 1) {
                  val obj = listColumn.get(count)
                  listTableData.add(entry2?.get(obj).toString())
              }
          }
          tableData = TableDatas(listColVal, listTableData)
      }
  } catch (e: Exception) {
      tableData = null
  }
}

 

Now the data is also parsed, we pass the two lists the ColumnList and DataList to the variable of TableDatas.

Three viewholder classes were added to display the table response properly in the app and corresponding to these viewholders a couple of adapters were also made that are responsible for setting the values in the recyclerview present in the views. The first viewholder is the TableViewHolder, it contains the horizontal recyclerview that is used to display the items fetched from the “data” object of the response. The recyclerview in the TableViewHolder has each entity of the type TabViewHolder, this is a simple cardview but also contains another recyclerview inside it which is used to store the keys and values of each of the object inside the “data” object.

TableViewHolder.java file has a setView() method that uses the the object of ChatMessage to get the list of columns and data to be set in the view.

 

Changes were made in the ChatPresenter.kt file to catch the tableresponse when a table type action is detected. Below is the implementation :

if (response.body().answers[0].actions[i].type.equals(“table”)) {
  tableResponse(query)
  return
}

The tableResponse function is as follows :

fun tableResponse(query: String) {
  val tz = TimeZone.getDefault()
  val now = Date()
  val timezoneOffset = -1 * (tz.getOffset(now.time) / 60000)
  val language = if (PrefManager.getString(Constant.LANGUAGE, Constant.DEFAULT).equals(Constant.DEFAULT)) Locale.getDefault().language else PrefManager.getString(Constant.LANGUAGE, Constant.DEFAULT)
  chatModel.getTableSusiMessage(timezoneOffset, longitude, latitude, source, language, query, this)
}

 

It calls the chatModel to get the list of columns and data to be set. The ChatFeedRecyclerAdapter.java files checks for the table response code, and if it matches then the view used for displaying SUSI’s message is the TableViewHolder. Here is how this viewholder is inflated :

case TABLE:
  view = inflater.inflate(R.layout.susi_table, viewGroup, false);
  return new TableViewHolder(view, clickListener);

Below is the final result when the table response is fetched for the query “Bayern munich team players” is :

References :

  1. SUSI server response for table query : https://api.susi.ai/susi/chat.json?timezoneOffset=-330&q=barcelona+team+players
  2. GSON for converting java objects to JSON and JSON to java : http://www.vogella.com/tutorials/JavaLibrary-Gson/article.html
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