README.md

CognitiveConcierge

Watson Conversation is now Watson Assistant. Although some images in this code pattern may show the service as Watson Conversation, the steps and processes will still work.

CognitiveConcierge is an end-to-end Swift application sample with an iOS front end and a Kitura web framework back end. This application also demonstrates how to pull in a number of different Watson services to your Swift client and server side apps via the Watson Developer Cloud's Swift SDK, including Watson Assistant, Text to Speech, Speech to Text, and the Natural Language Understanding service.

Included Components

Watson Assistant service
Watson Text to Speech service
Watson Speech to Text service
Watson Natural Language Understanding service
Google Places API

Application Workflow Diagram

The user deploys the server application to IBM Cloud.
The user interacts with the IOS application.
When the user performs any action, IOS application the server application API which uses the Watson services and Google Places API to provide the user recommendations.

Prerequisite

Obtain a Google Places API Key for Web: For this project, you'll need an API Key from Google Places, so that app can have access to review text which will be sent to the Natural Language Understanding service for analysis. Instructions for obtaining a key can be found here. Once you have an API Key, go to the Google Developer's Console, create a project, add your API key and enable the Google Places API for iOS as well. Make note of the API key for later use in your server and iOS applications.

If you haven't so yet, you also need to download and install the following:

Steps

Use the following steps to deploy the application

Deploy the Server Application
Update the Watson Assistant Service on IBM Cloud
Run the IOS Application

1. Deploy the Server Application

You can deploy the server application using any one of the following ways:

Deploy to Bluemix button
Bluemix command line

a) Using the Deploy to Bluemix button

Clicking on the button below creates a IBM Cloud DevOps Toolchain and deploys this application to the IBM Cloud. The manifest.yml file [included in the repo] is parsed to obtain the name of the application, configuration details, and the list of services that should be provisioned. For further details on the structure of the manifest.yml file, see the Cloud Foundry documentation.

Once deployment to the IBM Cloud is completed, you can view the deployed application and services from your IBM Cloud account.

b) Using the Bluemix command line

You can also manually deploy the Server Application to the IBM Cloud. Though not as magical as using the Bluemix button above, manually deploying the app gives you some insights about what is happening behind the scenes. Remember that you'd need the Bluemix command line installed on your system to deploy the app to the IBM Cloud.

Execute the following command to clone the Git repository:

git clone https://github.com/IBM/CognitiveConcierge.git

Go to the project's root folder on your system and execute the Cloud-Scripts/services/services.sh script to create the services CognitiveConcierge depends on. Please note that you should have logged on to the IBM Cloud before attempting to execute this script. For information on how to log in, see the IBM Cloud documentation.

Executing the Cloud-Scripts/services/services.sh script:

$ ./Cloud-Scripts/services/services.sh

Before deploying your application to the cloud, you will need to update it with the google API Key. In the main.swift folder, update the struct value with your google API Key.

After the services are created and you've updated this file, you can issue the bx app push YOUR_APP_NAME command from the project's root folder CognitiveConcierge to deploy the server application to IBM Cloud.

Once the application is running on the IBM Cloud, you can access your application's assigned URL (i.e. route). To find the route, you can log on to your IBM Cloud account, or you can inspect the output from the execution of the bluemix app push or bx app show <application name> commands. The string value shown next to the urls field contains the assigned route. Use that route as the URL to access the sample server using the browser of your choice.

$ bx app show CognitiveConcierge
Invoking 'cf app CognitiveConcierge'...

Showing health and status for app CognitiveConcierge in org [email protected] / space dev as [email protected]...
OK

requested state: started
instances: 1/1
usage: 512M x 1 instances
urls: cognitiveconcierge-lazarlike-archaizer.mybluemix.net
last uploaded: Mon Jun 5 18:01:42 UTC 2017
stack: cflinuxfs2
buildpack: swift_buildpack

     state     since                    cpu    memory         disk           details
#0   running   2017-06-05 11:05:41 AM   0.3%   6.4M of 512M   269.8M of 1G

2. Update Assistant Service

The Watson Assistant service enables you to add a natural language interface to your applications. The Watson Assistant service requires some initial workspace configuration. Go to the IBM Cloud dashboard and launch the Watson Assistant service. It should be named something like CognitiveConcierge-Assistant. Manually populate the workspace by clicking the upload button, and then upload the JSON found in Resources/conversationWorkspace.json. Make note of the workspace id for later use in running the iOS application.

3. Run the iOS Application

Install the necessary dependencies

From Terminal, change directories into the YourProjectName/CognitiveConcierge-iOS folder and run the following command to install the necessary dependencies (This may take some time):

carthage update --platform iOS
pod install

Update configuration for iOS app

Open the CognitiveConcierge.xcworkspace file in Xcode 9.2 from your terminal using open CognitiveConcierge.xcworkspace
Update CognitiveConcierge.plist file: One way to persist data in Swift is through the property list or .plist file. You will need to open this file and add the credentials for all of the services that were created for you earlier, as well as the Google Places API Key mentioned in the Prerequisites section. You can find these services in the Bluemix dashboard. Click the service name you're interested in, and then click Service Credentials. If there is no Credential created, click New Credential.

Update bluemix.plist file:

You should set the isLocal value to YES if you'd like to use a locally running server; if you set the value to NO, then you will be accessing the server instance running on the IBM Cloud.
To get the appRouteRemote value, you should go to your application's page on the IBM Cloud. There, you will find a View App button near the top right. Clicking on it should open up your app in a new tab, the url for this page is your route which maps to the appRouteRemote key in the plist. Make sure to include the http:// protocol in your appRouteRemote and to exclude a forward slash at the end of the url.
You can also use the command bx app env CognitiveConcierge where appRouteRemote is uris.

 {
  "VCAP_APPLICATION": {
   "application_id": "3d06c0e7-1fff-4dbf-b0cb-b289770eccfe",
   "application_name": "CognitiveConcierge",
   "application_uris": [
    "cognitiveconcierge-lazarlike-archaizer.mybluemix.net"
   ],
   "application_version": "3ef63168-35f5-4517-84e9-e8f19c8f34b4",
   "limits": {
    "disk": 1024,
    "fds": 16384,
    "mem": 512
   },
   "name": "CognitiveConcierge",
   "space_id": "2b3083b9-7ef9-4d55-9741-34433be4cea1",
   "space_name": "dev",
   "uris": [
    "cognitiveconcierge-lazarlike-archaizer.mybluemix.net"
   ],
   "users": null,
   "version": "3ef63168-35f5-4517-84e9-e8f19c8f34b4"
  }
 }

 Running Environment Variable Groups:
 BLUEMIX_REGION: ibm:yp:us-south

 Staging Environment Variable Groups:
 BLUEMIX_REGION: ibm:yp:us-south

Running the application

Press the Play button in Xcode to build and run the project in the simulator or on your iPhone!

Running the Kitura-based server locally

Before building the CognitiveConcierge-Server application, first update the credentials in the config/nlu-creds file for local development.

You can then build the CognitiveConcierge-Server by going to the CognitiveConcierge-Server directory of the cloned repository and running swift build. To start the Kitura-based server for the CognitiveConcierge app on your local system, go to the CognitiveConcierge-Server directory of the cloned repository and run .build/debug/CognitiveConcierge. You should also update the bluemix.plist and CognitiveConcierge.plist file in the Xcode project in order to have the iOS app connect to this local server. See the Update configuration for iOS app section for details.