Making a Web API call from the dialog script¶

To conduct a dialog with the user, your voice agent may need to get information from an external source. In this tutorial, we will make calls to the Spotify Web API based on the REST principles to retrieve a list of the most played tracks today.

What you will learn¶

How to get data from the Web API with a voice command
How to send POST and GET requests to the Web API from the dialog scripts
How to use the axios in the dialog script

What you will need¶

To go through this tutorial, make sure the following prerequisites are met:

You have signed up to Alan AI Studio.
You have created a project in Alan AI Studio.

Step 1. Get the access token¶

To access Spotify’s data and features, we first need to get the access token that we will use in requests to the Spotify Web API.

Browse to the Spotify Developer Dashboard. Log in or sign up, if you do not have an account yet.
In the Dashboard, create a new app and name it in any way you want.
Click the app and copy the Client ID and Client Secret for it.

In Alan AI Studio, add the getAuth() function to send a POST request to the Spotify Web API and get the access token. Replace the values for clientId and clientSecret with your own values.

We will send the POST request with axios. Notice api before axios in the code: this lets Alan AI access the built-in axios client from the dialog script.

Dialog script¶

// Defining user's client ID and client secret keys
let clientId = "222b87964e954669b95ff25d3a05e53b";
let clientSecret = "13e4e8e784214e6aaf97005c96a3e7df";

const getAuth = async () => {
    try {
        const response = await api.axios({
            url: 'https://accounts.spotify.com/api/token',
            method: 'post',
            params: {
                grant_type: 'client_credentials'
            },
            headers: {
                'Accept':'application/json',
                'Content-Type': 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded'
            },
            auth: {
                username: clientId,
                password: clientSecret
            }
        });
        // Writing the access token to Alan AI Studio logs
        console.log(response.data.access_token);
        return response.data.access_token;
    } catch(error) {
        console.error(error);
    }
}

To check if the access token is returned, call the getAuth() function from the dialog script. Open the Logs view at the bottom of Alan AI Studio: if you are authorized to access Spotify’s data, you’ll see the access token in logs.

Step 2: Get the top played tracks¶

With the token available, let’s get information about the most played songs on Spotify. We will send a GET request to get a list of today’s hits.

To the dialog script, add the code for the getTopTracks() function to get the list of today’s top hits and push these names to the tracksList array:

Dialog script¶

let tracksList = [];

const getTopTracks = async () => {
    // Getting the access token
    const access_token = await getAuth();
    // Defining the today's top list endpoint URL
    const api_url = "https://api.spotify.com/v1/playlists/37i9dQZF1DXcBWIGoYBM5M";
    try {
        const response = await api.axios.get(api_url, {
            // Sending the access token
            headers: {
                'Authorization': `Bearer ${access_token}`
            }
        });
        // Pushing the tracks names to the tracksList
        response.data.tracks.items.forEach(element => {
            tracksList.push(element.track.name);
        });
    } catch(error) {
        console.log(error);
    }
};

Add the voice command to play the list of tracks available in tracksList. In this example, we will play only the first 5 names in the list:

Dialog script¶

intent('What are the top 5 played songs on Spotify today?', async p => {
    // Getting the list of tracks
    await getTopTracks();
    // Naming the first 5 tracks
    p.play('The top 5 songs today are:');
    for (let i = 0; i < 5; i++) {
        let item = tracksList[i];
        p.play(`${item}`);
    }
})

You can test it: in the Debugging Chat, type the following command: What are the top 5 played songs on Spotify today?. Alan AI will name the first 5 tracks in the list.