Some Background:
I use Lists a lot for a Google Action with a NodeJS fulfillment backend. The Action is primarily Voice-based. The reason for using List is that I can encode information in List's key and use it later to make a decision. Another reason is that Google Assistant will try to fuzzy match the user's input with the Title of the List's items to find the closest matched option. This is where thing's get a bit hard for me. Consider the following example:
{
JSON.stringify(SOME_OBJECT): {
title: 'Yes'
},
JSON.stringify(ANOTHER_OBJECT): {
title: 'No'
}
}
Now if I say Yes / No, I can get the user's choice and do something with information stored as stringified JSON in the choice's Key.
But, the users may say Sure or Yup or OK as they basically mean the same thing as saying Yes. But as those words don't match Yes, Google Assistant will ignore the "Yes" option. But all of these words belong to the smalltalk.confirmation.yes built-in intent. So, if I could use this intent instead of hardcoding the string Yes then I would be able to capture all of the inputs that mean Yes.
I know I could do this with a Synonyms list or Confirmation intent. But they also have some problems.
Using Synonyms would require me finding every word which is similar. Besides, I would also need to localize these synonyms to all the supported language.
With Confirmation intent, I won't be able to show some information to the user before asking them to choose an option. Besides, it also doesn't support encoding the options as I can do in List's key.
So, List is a good choice for me in this case.
So, is there any way to leverage the built-in intents for this purpose? What do you do in this situation?
The speech synthesizer knows that Galway is pronouced 'gol-way' but has no understanding of anglicized versions of other town names such as Portlaoise which it should pronounce 'port-leash' or Thurles 'fur-less'.
Is there a way to correct the default pronunciation in JSON?
While Google should be doing a better job about some of the places, as Leon indicated in the comment, sometimes there will be cases where the audio just doesn't match the text and you want to coerce it yourself.
In these cases, you can use the SSML <sub> tag in your response. It takes an alias parameter which contains how you would like it pronounced, while the body of the tag would contain the displayable text.
I haven't tested it (and I'm not sure I'd know how it should sound, even if I did), but SSML like the following might be what you're looking for:
<speak>
Welcome to <sub alias="furless">Thurles</sub>.
</speak>
If you're using the node.js library from Google, it should detect this as SSML and set parameters in the response accordingly. If you're writing the JSON yourself, you will need to send it in the ssml field instead of the textToSpeech field in your SimpleResponse.
Using Bing Search API, is there any way to restrict searches by country? That is, an equivalent of Google Custom Search Engine's 'cr' parameter?
For instance, let's say I only want to find web pages from Spain that are available in English.
With Google Custom Search Engine I would use the parameters:
lr=lang_en # language = English
cr=countryES # country = Spain
However, the only related parameters I found for Bing Search API are
Markets, which seems to affect only the page's language
latitude & longitude: user's location (gl with Google), which weighs in location, but is not a strict filter.
The simplest way is not through the param, but rather modifying the search term (which is actually easier).
So let's say you want to search for the term London in Japanese> Simply do so by leveraging their advanced syntax and search for:
London language:ja
Where language:ja restricts the result to Japanese. You can see a list of language codes here.
If you want to include a region with it, add another advanced operator, loc:
London language:ja loc:es
The above search should return search for "London" written in Japanese, while being from Spain. The country code should be the same in the reference.
How can I use Slovenian search results by default? Our server has German IP and Bing API automatically shows German results first. I have already tried some of the parameters as described in documentation and none of them worked so far.
Thanks
Have you tried to set the Market option?
According to this example page, you should try something like this (note &Market=sl-SL argument):
http://api.bing.net/json.aspx?AppId=your_AppId&Query=your_query&Sources=Web&Version=2.0&Market=sl-SL&Options=EnableHighlighting&Web.Count=10&Web.Offset=0&JsonType=callback&JsonCallback=SearchCompleted
First off, Slovenia is currently not a Bing Market or Country.
There are 2 mutually exclusive options to configure a localization.
Since Slovenia is not yet supported, you might want to use 2. to combine results from relevant markets.
Using mkt and setLang
The values for mkt - Market Code are here.
The query value setLang, "The language to use for user interface strings. Specify the language using the ISO 639-1 2-letter language code. For example, the language code for English is EN. The default is EN (English)."
https://api.cognitive.microsoft.com/bing/v7.0/search?q=microsoft&mkt=en-US&setLang=EN
Using cc and Accept-Language
The values for cc - Country Code are here.
This allows you to specify multiple languages via the header value Accept-Language.
https://api.cognitive.microsoft.com/bing/v7.0/search?q=microsoft&cc=US
True, setting the Accept-Language does very little for the actual
result. If you want to localize outside of a Bing market country, you'll like have to include a translation service.
Values for the Market parameter
I'm looking for a reasonable way to represent searches as a RESTful URLs.
The setup: I have two models, Cars and Garages, where Cars can be in Garages. So my urls look like:
/car/xxxx
xxx == car id
returns car with given id
/garage/yyy
yyy = garage id
returns garage with given id
A Car can exist on its own (hence the /car), or it can exist in a garage. What's the right way to represent, say, all the cars in a given garage? Something like:
/garage/yyy/cars ?
How about the union of cars in garage yyy and zzz?
What's the right way to represent a search for cars with certain attributes? Say: show me all blue sedans with 4 doors :
/car/search?color=blue&type=sedan&doors=4
or should it be /cars instead?
The use of "search" seems inappropriate there - what's a better way / term? Should it just be:
/cars/?color=blue&type=sedan&doors=4
Should the search parameters be part of the PATHINFO or QUERYSTRING?
In short, I'm looking for guidance for cross-model REST url design, and for search.
[Update] I like Justin's answer, but he doesn't cover the multi-field search case:
/cars/color:blue/type:sedan/doors:4
or something like that. How do we go from
/cars/color/blue
to the multiple field case?
For the searching, use querystrings. This is perfectly RESTful:
/cars?color=blue&type=sedan&doors=4
An advantage to regular querystrings is that they are standard and widely understood and that they can be generated from form-get.
The RESTful pretty URL design is about displaying a resource based on a structure (directory-like structure, date: articles/2005/5/13, object and it's attributes,..), the slash / indicates hierarchical structure, use the -id instead.
Hierarchical structure
I would personaly prefer:
/garage-id/cars/car-id
/cars/car-id #for cars not in garages
If a user removes the /car-id part, it brings the cars preview - intuitive. User exactly knows where in the tree he is, what is he looking at. He knows from the first look, that garages and cars are in relation. /car-id also denotes that it belongs together unlike /car/id.
Searching
The searchquery is OK as it is, there is only your preference, what should be taken into account. The funny part comes when joining searches (see below).
/cars?color=blue;type=sedan #most prefered by me
/cars;color-blue+doors-4+type-sedan #looks good when using car-id
/cars?color=blue&doors=4&type=sedan #also possible, but & blends in with text
Or basically anything what isn't a slash as explained above.
The formula: /cars[?;]color[=-:]blue[,;+&], though I wouldn't use the & sign as it is unrecognizable from the text at first glance if that's your thing.
** Did you know that passing JSON object in URI is RESTful? **
Lists of options
/cars?color=black,blue,red;doors=3,5;type=sedan #most prefered by me
/cars?color:black:blue:red;doors:3:5;type:sedan
/cars?color(black,blue,red);doors(3,5);type(sedan) #does not look bad at all
/cars?color:(black,blue,red);doors:(3,5);type:sedan #little difference
possible features?
Negate search strings (!)
To search any cars, but not black and red:
?color=!black,!red
color:(!black,!red)
Joined searches
Search red or blue or black cars with 3 doors in garages id 1..20 or 101..103 or 999 but not 5
/garage[id=1-20,101-103,999,!5]/cars[color=red,blue,black;doors=3]
You can then construct more complex search queries. (Look at CSS3 attribute matching for the idea of matching substrings. E.g. searching users containing "bar" user*=bar.)
Conclusion
Anyway, this might be the most important part for you, because you can do it however you like after all, just keep in mind that RESTful URI represents a structure which is easily understood e.g. directory-like /directory/file, /collection/node/item, dates /articles/{year}/{month}/{day}.. And when you omit any of last segments, you immediately know what you get.
So.., all these characters are allowed unencoded:
unreserved: a-zA-Z0-9_.-~
Typically allowed both encoded and not, both uses are then equivalent.
special characters: $-_.+!*'(),
reserved: ;/?:#=&
May be used unencoded for the purpose they represent, otherwise they must be encoded.
unsafe: <>"#%{}|^~[]`
Why unsafe and why should rather be encoded: RFC 1738 see 2.2
Also see RFC 1738#page-20 for more character classes.
RFC 3986 see 2.2
Despite of what I previously said, here is a common distinction of delimeters, meaning that some "are" more important than others.
generic delimeters: :/?#[]#
sub-delimeters: !$&'()*+,;=
More reading:
Hierarchy: see 2.3, see 1.2.3
url path parameter syntax
CSS3 attribute matching
IBM: RESTful Web services - The basics
Note: RFC 1738 was updated by RFC 3986
Although having the parameters in the path has some advantages, there are, IMO, some outweighing factors.
Not all characters needed for a search query are permitted in a URL. Most punctuation and Unicode characters would need to be URL encoded as a query string parameter. I'm wrestling with the same problem. I would like to use XPath in the URL, but not all XPath syntax is compatible with a URI path. So for simple paths, /cars/doors/driver/lock/combination would be appropriate to locate the 'combination' element in the driver's door XML document. But /car/doors[id='driver' and lock/combination='1234'] is not so friendly.
There is a difference between filtering a resource based on one of its attributes and specifying a resource.
For example, since
/cars/colors returns a list of all colors for all cars (the resource returned is a collection of color objects)
/cars/colors/red,blue,green would return a list of color objects that are red, blue or green, not a collection of cars.
To return cars, the path would be
/cars?color=red,blue,green or /cars/search?color=red,blue,green
Parameters in the path are more difficult to read because name/value pairs are not isolated from the rest of the path, which is not name/value pairs.
One last comment. I prefer /garages/yyy/cars (always plural) to /garage/yyy/cars (perhaps it was a typo in the original answer) because it avoids changing the path between singular and plural. For words with an added 's', the change is not so bad, but changing /person/yyy/friends to /people/yyy seems cumbersome.
To expand on Peter's answer - you could make Search a first-class resource:
POST /searches # create a new search
GET /searches # list all searches (admin)
GET /searches/{id} # show the results of a previously-run search
DELETE /searches/{id} # delete a search (admin)
The Search resource would have fields for color, make model, garaged status, etc and could be specified in XML, JSON, or any other format. Like the Car and Garage resource, you could restrict access to Searches based on authentication. Users who frequently run the same Searches can store them in their profiles so that they don't need to be re-created. The URLs will be short enough that in many cases they can be easily traded via email. These stored Searches can be the basis of custom RSS feeds, and so on.
There are many possibilities for using Searches when you think of them as resources.
The idea is explained in more detail in this Railscast.
Justin's answer is probably the way to go, although in some applications it might make sense to consider a particular search as a resource in its own right, such as if you want to support named saved searches:
/search/{searchQuery}
or
/search/{savedSearchName}
I use two approaches to implement searches.
1) Simplest case, to query associated elements, and for navigation.
/cars?q.garage.id.eq=1
This means, query cars that have garage ID equal to 1.
It is also possible to create more complex searches:
/cars?q.garage.street.eq=FirstStreet&q.color.ne=red&offset=300&max=100
Cars in all garages in FirstStreet that are not red (3rd page, 100 elements per page).
2) Complex queries are considered as regular resources that are created and can be recovered.
POST /searches => Create
GET /searches/1 => Recover search
GET /searches/1?offset=300&max=100 => pagination in search
The POST body for search creation is as follows:
{
"$class":"test.Car",
"$q":{
"$eq" : { "color" : "red" },
"garage" : {
"$ne" : { "street" : "FirstStreet" }
}
}
}
It is based in Grails (criteria DSL): http://grails.org/doc/2.4.3/ref/Domain%20Classes/createCriteria.html
This is not REST. You cannot define URIs for resources inside your API. Resource navigation must be hypertext-driven. It's fine if you want pretty URIs and heavy amounts of coupling, but just do not call it REST, because it directly violates the constraints of RESTful architecture.
See this article by the inventor of REST.
In addition i would also suggest:
/cars/search/all{?color,model,year}
/cars/search/by-parameters{?color,model,year}
/cars/search/by-vendor{?vendor}
Here, Search is considered as a child resource of Cars resource.
There are a lot of good options for your case here. Still you should considering using the POST body.
The query string is perfect for your example, but if you have something more complicated, e.g. an arbitrary long list of items or boolean conditionals, you might want to define the post as a document, that the client sends over POST.
This allows a more flexible description of the search, as well as avoids the Server URL length limit.
RESTful does not recommend using verbs in URL's /cars/search is not restful. The right way to filter/search/paginate your API's is through Query Parameters. However there might be cases when you have to break the norm. For example, if you are searching across multiple resources, then you have to use something like /search?q=query
You can go through http://saipraveenblog.wordpress.com/2014/09/29/rest-api-best-practices/ to understand the best practices for designing RESTful API's
Though I like Justin's response, I feel it more accurately represents a filter rather than a search. What if I want to know about cars with names that start with cam?
The way I see it, you could build it into the way you handle specific resources:
/cars/cam*
Or, you could simply add it into the filter:
/cars/doors/4/name/cam*/colors/red,blue,green
Personally, I prefer the latter, however I am by no means an expert on REST (having first heard of it only 2 or so weeks ago...)
My advice would be this:
/garages
Returns list of garages (think JSON array here)
/garages/yyy
Returns specific garage
/garage/yyy/cars
Returns list of cars in garage
/garages/cars
Returns list of all cars in all garages (may not be practical of course)
/cars
Returns list of all cars
/cars/xxx
Returns specific car
/cars/colors
Returns lists of all posible colors for cars
/cars/colors/red,blue,green
Returns list of cars of the specific colors (yes commas are allowed :) )
Edit:
/cars/colors/red,blue,green/doors/2
Returns list of all red,blue, and green cars with 2 doors.
/cars/type/hatchback,coupe/colors/red,blue,green/
Same idea as the above but a lil more intuitive.
/cars/colors/red,blue,green/doors/two-door,four-door
All cars that are red, blue, green and have either two or four doors.
Hopefully that gives you the idea. Essentially your Rest API should be easily discoverable and should enable you to browse through your data. Another advantage with using URLs and not query strings is that you are able to take advantage of the native caching mechanisms that exist on the web server for HTTP traffic.
Here's a link to a page describing the evils of query strings in REST: http://web.archive.org/web/20070815111413/http://rest.blueoxen.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?QueryStringsConsideredHarmful
I used Google's cache because the normal page wasn't working for me here's that link as well:
http://rest.blueoxen.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?QueryStringsConsideredHarmful