Bluemix: Where Python and Watson are in a Dialog

Right now I am working on a side project to hook up the Watson Dialog Service on Bluemix with dashDB and DB2. The idea is to dynamically feed data from DB2 into a conversation bot. To register and manage dialogs with the Watson Dialog Service, there is a web-based dialog tool available. But there is also a dialog API and a Python SDK for the Watson services available. So why not manage the dialogs from the command line...?

Converse with Watson from the Command Line

Here is a small overview of my Python client that helps to register, update, delete and list dialogs and that can even drive a dialog (converse with Watson) from the shell window on your machine. The code and for now some short documentation is available on GitHub as watson-dialog-client.

In order to use the tool, you need to have the Watson Dialog Service provisioned on IBM Bluemix. The service credentials need to be stored in a file config.json in the same directory as the tool "henriksDialog". The credentials look like shown here:

{
    "credentials": {
        "url": "https://gateway.watsonplatform.net/dialog/api",
        "password": "yourServicePassword",
        "username": "yourUserIDwhichIsALongString"
    }
}

The credentials are read by the tool to "chat" with the dialog service. The following commands are available:

• register a dialog by providing a new dialog name and the XML definition file
  "henriksDialog -r -dn dialogName -f definitionFile"
• update a dialog by identifying it by its ID and providing a definition file
  "henriksDialog -u -id dialogID -f definitionFile"
• delete a dialog identified by its ID
  "henriksDialog -d -id dialogID"
• list all registered dialogs
  "henriksDialog -l"
• converse, i.e., test out a registered dialog which is identified by its ID
  "henriksDialog -c -id dialogID"

Sample invocations and their output is available in the GitHub repository for this dialog tool. Let me know if something is missing or you had success chatting with Watson from the command line.