Book Image

Hands-On Chatbots and Conversational UI Development

By : Srini Janarthanam
Book Image

Hands-On Chatbots and Conversational UI Development

By: Srini Janarthanam

Overview of this book

Conversation as an interface is the best way for machines to interact with us using the universally accepted human tool that is language. Chatbots and voice user interfaces are two flavors of conversational UIs. Chatbots are real-time, data-driven answer engines that talk in natural language and are context-aware. Voice user interfaces are driven by voice and can understand and respond to users using speech. This book covers both types of conversational UIs by leveraging APIs from multiple platforms. We'll take a project-based approach to understand how these UIs are built and the best use cases for deploying them. We'll start by building a simple messaging bot from the Facebook Messenger API to understand the basics of bot building. Then we move on to creating a Task model that can perform complex tasks such as ordering and planning events with the newly-acquired-by-Google Dialogflow and Microsoft Bot framework. We then turn to voice-enabled UIs that are capable of interacting with users using speech with Amazon Alexa and Google Home. By the end of the book, you will have created your own line of chatbots and voice UIs for multiple leading platforms.
Table of Contents (11 chapters)

Todoist

Todoist is an online service to store and organize lists of items that you plan to do in the near future. Users can add tasks to their account, organize them under projects, and assign deadlines and reminders to their tasks. The account can be accessed on their website as well as apps on Android and iOS devices. The Todoist service can be accessed using their developer API as well. Let us examine two basic services: adding tasks and retrieving the to-do list for the day.

Getting the key

To access Todoist, we need an API key. To get one, follow these steps:

  1. Go to https://todoist.com/.
  2. Sign up for an account.
  3. Log in to the account and view the dashboard.
  4. Try adding a task by clicking Add Task:

You can see...