How to use actions.intent.DATETIME? - actions-on-google

Question

It is "clearly" defined in the documentation, but I can find no example of how to use actions.intent.DATETIME.
Please provide an example of what is needed in the 'action.json' file, and how my code can get the date and time provided using the assistant SDK helper. I haven't been able to figure out how to use actions.intent.___ at all!
At the simplest level, I want my code to know whether it is morning or evening for the person since I need to give different information in each case. Someone might want to do this to respond "Good morning" or "Good evening".
Also to do with intents, at a more complex level, I also want to know their approximate location (lat/long). I figured that once I know how to work with DATETIME, I'd be able to apply the same code pattern to use getDeviceLocation.
There is some code at https://github.com/actions-on-google/actions-on-google-nodejs that uses the DATETIME intent, but it asks the user for any time. I want to simply know what their current time is.

Answer 1

The DateTime intent can be invoked using the askForDateTime() method from the ActionsSdkApp class in our client library. Simply call the method from an intent, and pass it some queries which clarify the prompting. Then listen for the response using a listener for the actions.intent.DATETIME intent, just as you would listen for the actions.intent.TEXT intent.
In the handler for the actions.intent.DATETIME intent, you can use the getDateTime() method to retrieve the data. Unfortunately this intent only works by asking for an exact date and time from the user, and it is a generic date and time, so there is no guarantee that it is their current datetime unless you structure your prompts in a way to guide the user towards that.
const app = new ActionsSdkApp({ request, response });
function welcomeIntent (app) {
app.askForDateTime('When do you want to come in?',
Which date works best for you?',
'What time of day works best for you?');
}
function datetime (app) {
app.tell({speech: 'Great see you at your appointment!',
displayText: 'Great, we will see you on '
+ app.getDateTime().date.month
+ '/' + app.getDateTime().date.day
+ ' at ' + app.getDateTime().time.hours
+ (app.getDateTime().time.minutes || '')});
}
const actionMap = new Map();
actionMap.set(app.StandardIntents.MAIN, welcomeIntent);
actionMap.set(app.StandardIntents.DATETIME, datetime);
app.handleRequest(actionMap);
As you mentioned you can invoke and handle the actions.intent.PERMISSION intent in a similar way to get a precise longitude and latitude location.
As a side note, if you are using API.AI, you can use their Date and Time system entities to do this, or use the askForDateTime() method in the ApiAiApp class from the client library.

Answer 2

You can em-bed the maps API location/time in your app JSON or, other open source. As far as location it is device and user settings specific so, whether or not you get a JSNODE response from the device/user depends on the user even if they are running the APP and, have different setting preferences.