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This tutorial takes you through building a simple Node.js application that is connected to a COVID-19 chatbot using the Watson Assistant APIs. The steps are taken from this assistant-simple repository and adopted for 2020 Call for Code challenge. You can use this tutorial as a starting template for the COVID-19 challenge.

Learning objectives

In this tutorial, you will:

  1. Learn how to create a simple Node.js application.
  2. Connect the application to a chatbot using the IBM Watson Assistant APIs.
  3. Test and run the application locally.
  4. Deploy the application on IBM Cloud as a Cloud Foundry application.

Here is a demo of the final application:

Chatbot demo

Prerequisites

  1. Sign up for an IBM Cloud account.

  2. Download the IBM Cloud CLI. You will use it to push your Node.js application to the cloud.

  3. You should already have a Watson Assistant service created when you deployed the COVID bot following this tutorial. You will need your assistant credentials (Assistant ID, Assistant URL and Api Key) as explained in the previous tutorial.

    Watson Assistant Photo7

Estimated time

This tutorial will take you about 30 minutes to complete.

Steps

The following steps assume that you have created an assistant, imported the COVID skills, and have the assistant credentials available.

Configuring the application

  1. Clone the repository and cd into starter-kit/covid-simple.

  2. Copy the .env.example file to a file called .env

    cp .env.example .env

  3. Open the .env file and change the credentials as follows:

    • ASSISTANT_URL: service endpoint for Watson Assistant based on the region your service is created in. You can get the region specific service endpoints from the documentation. The URLs are as follows at the time these instructions were written:
    Region Service Endpoint
    Dallas https://api.us-south.assistant.watson.cloud.ibm.com
    Washington, DC https://api.us-east.assistant.watson.cloud.ibm.com
    Frankfurt https://api.eu-de.assistant.watson.cloud.ibm.com
    Sydney https://api.au-syd.assistant.watson.cloud.ibm.com
    Tokyo https://api.jp-tok.assistant.watson.cloud.ibm.com
    London https://api.eu-gb.assistant.watson.cloud.ibm.com
    • ASSISTANT_ID: Assistant ID as shown in the screenshot above.
    • ASSISTANT_IAM_APIKEY: Api Key as shown in the screenshot above.
    • ASSISTANT_IAM_URL: Assistant URL as shown in the screenshot above.

    That's it! You are now ready to run your application.

    Note: if you have an older Watson Assistant Service, you may have to use a username and password in place of the API key. The following example .env file configures the username, password, and url for an older Watson Assistant service instance hosted in the US South region:

    ASSISTANT_USERNAME=522be-7b41-ab44-dec3-xxxxxxxx
ASSISTANT_PASSWORD=A4Z5BdGENxxxx
ASSISTANT_URL=https://gateway.watsonplatform.net/assistant/api

Running locally

  1. Install the dependencies:

    npm install

  2. Run the application:

    npm start

  3. View the application in a browser at localhost:3000.

Deploy to IBM Cloud as a Cloud Foundry application

  1. Log in to IBM Cloud with the IBM Cloud CLI:

    ibmcloud login

  2. Target a Cloud Foundry organization and space:

    ibmcloud target --cf

  3. Edit the manifest.yml file. Change the name field to something unique.
    For example, - name: covid-assistant-simple-yourname.

  4. Deploy the application

    ibmcloud app push

  5. View the application online at the app URL. For example, covid-assistant-simple-yourname.mybluemix.net.

Build a Docker container

If you want to containerize this covid-assistant-simple application so that you can run it in a Kubernetes cluster or other hosted service, follow these instructions.

  • First, fill in the Watson Assistant credentials in the .env file.
  • The slim version of package.json strips out the test dependencies and will be copied into the container.
  • Build the container:

docker build . -t <your-docker-username>/covid-chatbot

  • Test your container interactively

docker container run -p 3000:3000 --name chatbot -it <your-docker-username>/covid-chatbot:latest /bin/bash

  • Within the container, run

node server.js

  • Open a browser to http://localhost:3000
  • Exit the container
  • Optionally, push the container to Docker Hub (remember that it has your credentials file so you might want to push it to a private repository or registry)

Take on COVID-19

You now know how to build a chatbot using Watson Assistant and a website on IBM Cloud that users to interact with the chatbot. You can see some other Watson Assistant sample applications in the official documentation.

It's your turn to use these technologies to help tackle this pandemic and make a difference by accepting the COVID-19 challenge!