Dispatcher.utter_message not working in Rasa SDK version 1.7

Rasa Open Source
1

Hi all,

I am trying to build a chatbot using Rasa and I am using the following packages:

rasa-core==0.14.5 rasa-core-sdk==0.14.0 rasa-nlu==0.15.1 rasa-sdk==1.7.0

My custom action file code is:

class ApiAction(Action):
    def name(self):
        return "action_retrieve_news"

    def run(self, dispatcher, tracker, domain):
        
#         print ("Reached action_retrieve_news")
#         topic = tracker.get_slot('topic')
        response = {"text":"News are Blah Blah Blah"}
        dispatcher.utter_message(text="News are Blah Blah Blah")
        
        return []

And my endpoint is

action_endpoint:
  url: "http://localhost:5055/webhook"

I am running the server using the following commands:

python -m rasa_sdk --actions actions
python -m rasa_core.run -d models/dialogue -u models/nlu/default/chat --endpoints endpoints.yml --debug

The issue is dispatcher is not returning any response. I am not seeing the text “News are Blah Blah Blah”. Can anyone please help me with that?

This is the debug logs I am seeing when the custom action is triggered:

2020-02-12 19:36:50 DEBUG rasa_core.policies.memoization - Current tracker state [{‘entity_topic’: 1.0, ‘prev_action_retrieve_news’: 1.0, ‘slot_topic_0’: 1.0, ‘intent_ask_news_with_topic’: 1.0}, {‘prev_utter_continue_conversation’: 1.0, ‘entity_topic’: 1.0, ‘slot_topic_0’: 1.0, ‘intent_ask_news_with_topic’: 1.0}, {‘intent_agree’: 1.0, ‘prev_action_listen’: 1.0, ‘slot_topic_0’: 1.0}, {‘intent_agree’: 1.0, ‘prev_utter_ask_topic’: 1.0, ‘slot_topic_0’: 1.0}, {‘entity_topic’: 1.0, ‘prev_action_listen’: 1.0, ‘slot_topic_0’: 1.0, ‘intent_ask_news_with_topic’: 1.0}]

2020-02-12 19:36:50 DEBUG rasa_core.policies.memoization - There is no memorised next action

2020-02-12 19:36:50 DEBUG rasa_core.policies.ensemble - Predicted next action using policy_0_KerasPolicy

2020-02-12 19:36:50 DEBUG rasa_core.processor - Predicted next action ‘action_retrieve_news’ with prob 0.82.

2020-02-12 19:36:50 DEBUG rasa_core.actions.action - Calling action endpoint to run action ‘action_retrieve_news’.

2020-02-12 19:36:50 DEBUG rasa_core.processor - Action ‘action_retrieve_news’ ended with events ‘’

2

You are using some old and new packages. We replaced rasa-core and rasa-nlu with a package called rasa. I would recommend to install rasa (Installation) and try again together with rasa-sdk. You can remove the other packages (pip uninstall rasa-core rasa-nlu rasa-core-sdk).

I think you don’t need to modify any code (at lease the action looks good), however you should use different commands to start the bot:

# Start the action server via
rasa run actions
# Run Rasa via
rasa run --debug

Also you should retrain your model before starting Rasa via rasa train. Does that help?

1 Like
3

Thank you very much. That did help me :slight_smile:

I have one more question. Can we make API call in custom action to load data from external API’s like Twitter updates or Google news?

4

Great!

Yes, you can do API calls inside your custom actions.