Dialogs

[aacebo]

Introduction

I have worked out a prototype for how I think dialogs could work in the context of our SDK. Since many of our customers use dialogs this is an important feature to get right, the following code examples are for typescript and may not be identical to how the feature gets implemented in sibling languages.

Goals

• Simplify: From what I can see in the botbuilder examples, creating dialogs can be verbose.
• State: Create a cohesive experience for a dialog to interact with our TurnState.

Examples

app.activity(ActivityTypes.Message, async (context: TurnContext, state: ApplicationTurnState) => {
    // // Increment count state
    let count = state.conversation.value.count ?? 0;
    state.conversation.value.count = ++count;

    await app.dialog('MAIN')
        .addDialog(new WaterfallDialog('WATERFALL_DIALOG', [
            async step => {
                return step.prompt('NUMBER_PROMPT', {
                    prompt: 'Please enter your age.',
                    retryPrompt: 'The value entered must be greater than 0 and less than 150.'
                });
            },
            async step => {
                await step.context.sendActivity(`your number is: ${step.result}, count: ${count}`);
                return step.endDialog();
            }
        ]))
        .addDialog(new NumberPrompt('NUMBER_PROMPT'))
        .startOrContinue(context);
});

Nesting

You can also nest dialogs:

await app.dialog('MAIN')
    .addDialog(
        app.dialog('CHILD')
            .addDialog(new NumberPrompt('NUMBER_PROMPT'))
    )
    .startOrContinue(context);