Pass simple string phrases to an alexa skill - alexa

I'm developing an Alexa skill and want to pass simple utterances like "How much are five oranges" to it.
My idea was to define utterances like
how much are {amount} {articleName}
with the slots amount of type NUMBER and articleName of type AMAZON.SearchQuery
But AMAZON.SearchQuery cannot be combined with other slot types. Thus, are there other ways to pass simple, non typed-strings like article names to a skill?

You could just use a custom slot type:
Overview of custom slot types
Create your custom slot type for articleName and just add a number of example slot values. This should work for you.
If the slot value can be 1 word as well as 2 words - make sure you add examples for both.
Once you've set this up in the developer console, you could test it (without deploying code), using the utterance profiler.
You can then tweak / revise as needed.

A custom slot type is not the equivalent of an enumeration.
Values outside the list are still returned if recognized by the spoken
language understanding system
Although input to the slot type is weighted towards the values in the list, it is not constrained to just the items on the list.
Ref here.

Related

Get selected values in a checkbox group in xpages

I have a checkbox group and I am trying to get the values ​​selected via SSJS, but so far I have not been successful. I've tried several syntaxes, such as:
document1.getItemValueArray ("nameField")
and
getComponent ("nameField") getSelectedValues ​​();
Does anyone know a way to get the selected values ​​from a checkbox group?
document1.getFirstItem("nameField").getValues() may be what you want. If it's one value, it will be a string, not a Vector, which may be a problem with getItemValueArray().
With ODA (OpenNTF Domino API), we extended the getItemValue() method to take a second parameter and cast the result to that kind of object. That has a big benefit for this kind of scenario, allowing getItemValue("nameField", ArrayList.class) to always return an ArrayList even for a single value, plus ArrayList is a much better and more modern Java (so relevant also for SSJS) construct than a Vector.

One-word slot amazon alexa

I am trying to make a slot that can capture one word. I just want the whole directive to be one word long, and any English word will trigger the intent. I tried using Amazon.LITERAL but that can capture a whole phrase, which is not what I want. Is there any way to do this in Alexa?
There is not a way currently to limit the number of words returned in a slot.
You can prompt the user in a way that makes it clear that you only expect a single word, and your lambda code can verify that only a single word is provided in the slot.
For example, have Alexa say "tell me a word that ... you can say 'alexa, tell your-skill-name that the word is lucky'". You might say this for example during the LaunchRequest.
You can then verify that only one word was specified in the slot, and reprompt as needed.
The intent for the answer could look something like "MyWordIntent the word is {Word}"

Ruby: Hash, Arrays and Objects for storage information

I am learning Ruby, reading few books, tutorials, foruns and so one... so, I am brand new to this.
I am trying to develop a stock system so I can learn doing.
My questions are the following:
I created the following to store transactions: (just few parts of the code)
transactions.push type: "BUY", date: Date.strptime(date.to_s, '%d/%m/%Y'), quantity: quantity, price: price.to_money(:BRL), fees: fees.to_money(:BRL)
And one colleague here suggested to create a Transaction class to store this.
So, for the next storage information that I had, I did:
#dividends_from_stock << DividendsFromStock.new(row["Approved"], row["Value"], row["Type"], row["Last Day With"], row["Payment Day"])
Now, FIRST question: which way is better? Hash in Array or Object in Array? And why?
This #dividends_from_stock is returned by the method 'dividends'.
I want to find all the dividends that were paid above a specific date:
puts ciel3.dividends.find_all {|dividend| Date.parse(dividend.last_day_with) > Date.parse('12/05/2014')}
I get the following:
#<DividendsFromStock:0x2785e60>
#<DividendsFromStock:0x2785410>
#<DividendsFromStock:0x2784a68>
#<DividendsFromStock:0x27840c0>
#<DividendsFromStock:0x1ec91f8>
#<DividendsFromStock:0x2797ce0>
#<DividendsFromStock:0x2797338>
#<DividendsFromStock:0x2796990>
Ok with this I am able to spot (I think) all the objects that has date higher than the 12/05/2014. But (SECOND question) how can I get the information regarding the 'value' (or other information) stored inside the objects?
Generally it is always better to define classes. Classes have names. They will help you understand what is going on when your program gets big. You can always see the class of each variable like this: var.class. If you use hashes everywhere, you will be confused because these calls will always return Hash. But if you define classes for things, you will see your class names.
Define methods in your classes that return the information you need. If you define a method called to_s, Ruby will call it behind the scenes on the object when you print it or use it in an interpolation (puts "Some #{var} here").
You probably want a first-class model of some kind to represent the concept of a trade/transaction and a list of transactions that serves as a ledger.
I'd advise steering closer to a database for this instead of manipulating toy objects in memory. Sequel can be a pretty simple ORM if used minimally, but ActiveRecord is often a lot more beginner friendly and has fewer sharp edges.
Using naked hashes or arrays is good for prototyping and seeing if something works in principle. Beyond that it's important to give things proper classes so you can relate them properly and start to refine how these things fit together.
I'd even start with TransactionHistory being a class derived from Array where you get all that functionality for free, then can go and add on custom things as necessary.
For example, you have a pretty gnarly interface to DividendsFromStock which could be cleaned up by having that format of row be accepted to the initialize function as-is.
Don't forget to write a to_s or inspect method for any custom classes you want to be able to print or have a look at. These are usually super simple to write and come in very handy when debugging.
thank you!
I will answer my question, based on the information provided by tadman and Ilya Vassilevsky (and also B. Seven).
1- It is better to create a class, and the objects. It will help me organize my code, and debug. Localize who is who and doing what. Also seems better to use with DB.
2- I am a little bit shamed with my question after figure out the solution. It is far simpler than I was thinking. Just needed two steps:
willpay = ciel3.dividends.find_all {|dividend| Date.parse(dividend.last_day_with) > Date.parse('10/09/2015')}
willpay.each do |dividend|
puts "#{ciel3.code} has approved #{dividend.type} on #{dividend.approved} and will pay by #{dividend.payment_day} the value of #{dividend.value.format} per share, for those that had the asset on #{dividend.last_day_with}"
puts
end

pybrain image input to dataset for Neural Network

I'm trying to write a neural network that (after being properly trained) identifies certain road signs and returns a different output for each type of sign.
Before I started to train my network, I noticed on the pybrain website that their datasets are always an array of values, each entry containing an input and a target. The images I have for my NN have been converted to grayscale pixel data (a simple array of numbers). To train each set of data, do I need to somehow add a target value for each pixel? And if so, how would I go about doing that?
QUICK ANSWER
No, you don't need target for every single pixel, you treat pixels from single image as your input data and you add target to that data.
LONG ANSWER
What you trying to do is to solve classification problem. You have image represented by array of numbers and you need to classify it as some class from limited set of classes.
So lets say that you have 2 classes: prohibitions signs (I'm not native speaker, I don't know how you call signs that forbid something), and information signs. Lets say that prohibition signs is our class 1 and information signs is class 2.
Your data set should look like this:
([representation of sign in numbers], class) - single sample
After that, since it's classification problem, I recommend using _convertToOneOfMany() method of DataSet class, to convert your targets into multiple outputs.
I've answered similar question here, go check it out.

Whys is it a bad idea to have an Object[] array?

I was explaining to a friend a few days ago the concept or inheritance and containers.
He has very little programming knowledge so it was really just a friendly chat.
During the conversation he came to me with a question that i just couldn't answer.
"Why cant you just have an array of the top level class, and add anything to it"
I know this is a bad idea having being told so before by someone far smarter but for the life of me i couldn't remember why.
I mean we do it all the time with inheritance.
Say we have class animal which is parent of cat and dog. If we need a container of both of these we make the array of type animal.
So lets say we didn't have that inheritance link, couldn't we just use the base object class and have everything in the one container.
No specific programming language.
Syntactically, there is no problem with this. By declaring an array of a specific type, you are giving implicit information about the contents of that array. You could well declare a contain of Object instances, but it means you lose all the type information of the original class at compile-time.
It also means that each time you get an object out of the array at runtime, the only field instances and methods you know exist are the fields/methods of Object (which arguably is a compile time problem). To use any of the fields and methods of more specific subclasses of the object, you'd have to cast.
Alternatively, to find out the specific class at runtime you'd have to use features like reflection which are overkill for the majority of cases.
When you take elements out of the container you want to have some guarantees as to what can be done with them. If all elements of the container are returned as instances of Animal (remember here that instances of Dog are also instances of Animal) then you know that they can do all the things that Animals can do (which is more things than what all Objects can do).
Maybe, we do it in programming for the same reason as in Biology? Reptiles and Whales are animals, but they are quite different.
It depends on the situation, but without context, it's definitely okay in most (if not all) object-oriented languages to have an array of a base type (that is, as long as they follow all the substitution principles) containing various instances of different derived types.
Object arrays exist in certain cases in most languages. The problem is that whenever you want to use them, you need to remember what type they were, and stay casting them or whatever.
It also makes the code very horrible to follow and even more horrible to extend, not to mention error prone.
Plant myplant = new Plant();
listOfAnimals.Add(myplant);
would work if the list is object, but you'd get a compile time error if it was Animal.

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