Hello, how do i display an image using IBM Watson conversation that is linked to facebook messenger using IBM Watson? - ibm-watson

Question

I have created a bot using IBM Watson Conversation and that bot only is able chat with normal text. How do i program the bot to chat with images as well? How do i embed an image into the chatbots' response?

Answer 1

Within the dialog tool itself you will not be able to view any other type of media other than text. The output in the test panel will simply show the output from the node.
When deployed to an application such as a web application the output node would look something like this containing HTML markup:
{
"output": {
"text": {
"values": [
"Hello world Click here"
],
"selection_policy": "sequential"
}
}
}
In this case to display an image you would simply replace the link tag with that of an HTML image etc.
An example starter kit can be found here https://github.com/watson-developer-cloud/conversation-simple
You will need an orchestration layer to handle the encoding to the desired platform format e.g FB messenger requires an object to be passed such as
"buttons":[
{
"type":"web_url",
"url":"https://petersfancyapparel.com/criteria_selector",
"title":"Select Criteria",
"webview_height_ratio": "full",
"messenger_extensions": true,
"fallback_url": "https://petersfancyapparel.com/fallback"
}
]
An example orchestration layer such as Botmaster can be used alongside its extension fulfill that will allow you to create these objects and in the Watson dialog simply just add custom XML tags. E.g www.google.com this will then be passed to the orchestration layer which will send the relevant object. A code example using this method can be found here with some other Facebook actions.