Botframework-sdk: Retry a dialog step in waterfall

[McGern]

Hi,

Hoping to get a bit more documentation for an issue I am having.

Am using nodejs, and can't see from the documentation or examples how to repeat a waterfall step until the user supplies something that can be used. I can see 2 potential candidates,

http://docs.botframework.com/sdkreference/nodejs/interfaces/_botbuilder_d_.ipromptoptions.html
(that has maxTries and retryPrompt)

http://docs.botframework.com/sdkreference/nodejs/classes/_botbuilder_d_.dialogaction.html#validated
(prompt for validating a prompt response)

But I can't see how to tie the 3 concepts together (waterfall, promptOptions and validatedPrompt). Example scenarios are:-

• User enters a date, but the date isn't valid because of business logic (in the past, unavailable)
• User enters a location, so need to check against list of available locations (perhaps from an api call)

Any help would be appreciated. Loving the work with botbuilder and LUIS BTW.

Thanks,
Jarrod

[alexbezhan]

I am looking for this too.

[alexbezhan]

I'm especially interested in asynchronous version of validatedPrompt(), since I want to validate user input by LUIS.

[srijiths]

I suggest you to think more in a modular way. By keeping your waterfall,luis calls,prompts as different functions and based on the user response traverse to and fro.

[loretoparisi]

@McGern

First it's better that each waterfall step is a variable function, so that you can use it more than once. Assumed that you do

session.userData.corrections =  {
                        text : corrections.text,
                        result : corrections.result
                      };
// This prompt already knows to look for several variants of the yes & no.
                      // The returned result.response will be a simple Boolean so way easier to check.
                      // @see https://github.com/Microsoft/BotBuilder/issues/183
                      BotBuilder.Prompts.confirm(session, msg );

supposed that you are applying some text corrections to the user input in this case and then asking the user for a confirmation. At that point in the waterfall step 2 you do

var response=results.response;
            if( response ) { // BotBuilder.Prompts.confirm bool

              // replace query and session
              // @see https://github.com/Microsoft/BotBuilder/issues/183
              if( session.userData.corrections.text ) {
                session.message.text=session.userData.corrections.result;
              }
              session.replaceDialog('/');
            }

to get the response, and the replace the input text to yours and redo the query with the replaceDialog function.

[v-thgratMSGit]

Closing this issue. Thanks for your answer @loretoparisi !

[Stevenic]

A couple of comments... Sorry I'm coming late. As of v3.1.x I believe, prompts no longer return until the user successfully provides an answer. MaxRetries is essentially infinite by default now. You can use a validated prompt or you can build a dialog which acts like a custom prompt.

I'm about to re-write the prompt system such that building rich custom prompts is going to be WAY easier. The validatedPrompt() stuff will be deprecated at that point. More details coming.

[akontsevich]

I have exact same task:

• User enters a date, but the date isn't valid because of business logic (in the past, unavailable)
• User enters a location, so need to check against list of available locations (perhaps from an api call)

Guys, could You point me to workable code for BotBuilder 3.9 please: how to implement this? Thanks!

P.S. Answered here: https://stackoverflow.com/q/45766908/630169