How to use external dependencies for custom actions in droplet server with rasa x

[Deprecated] Rasa X Community Edition
1

I am really struggling with developing custom actions in droplet (digital ocean).

Through the lesson (Rasa Tutorials - Install Rasa X with Docker Compose on Digital Ocean - YouTube), managed to finish setting up rasa x and Github connection. However, couldn’t find a way to enable my “simple custom actions” as shown below (it is all saved in etc/rasa/actions with empty init.py):

from typing import Any, Text, Dict, List
import pandas as pd
from rasa_sdk import Action, Tracker
from rasa_sdk.executor import CollectingDispatcher

class ActionRephraseResponse(Action):

    def name(self) -> Text:
        return "action_pandas"

    def run(self, dispatcher: CollectingDispatcher,
            tracker: Tracker,
            domain: Dict[Text, Any]) -> List[Dict[Text, Any]]:

        df = pd.DataFrame({"A": ["this dataframe is working", "dataframe is working", 7], "B": [2, 5, 8], "C": [3, 6, 9]})
        dispatcher.utter_message(text=df["A"].tolist()[0])

        return []

Seems it’s an issue with adding dependencies to rasa, but I’ve installed pandas for sure by

sudo apt-get install python3-pandas

and made “docker-compose.override.yml” with the content:

version: '3.4'
services:
  app:
    image: 'rasa/rasa-sdk:latest'
    volumes:
      - './actions:/app/actions'
    expose:
      - '5055'
    depends_on:
      - rasa-production

and ran “sudo docker-compose down” and “sudo docker-compose up -d”. As a result, my model can understand when to “action_pandas” without saying “this dataframe is working”.

To fix this, I’ve found some answers talking about using Dockerfile like:

touch Dockerfile
nano Dockerfile

FROM rasa/rasa-sdk:2.8.2

# Switch to root user
USER root

#RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y git

# Do other stuff, e.g.: add python dependencies, etc.
RUN pip3 install --no-cache-dir numpy
RUN pip3 install --no-cache-dir pandas

# Switch back to a non-root user
USER 1001

and I ran

docker build .

However, it’s not working despite showing:

Installing collected packages: six, pytz, python-dateutil, pandas
Successfully installed pandas-1.3.3 python-dateutil-2.8.2 pytz-2021.3 six-1.16.0
Removing intermediate container 3b3c9b58f2b2
 ---> 3460c743a5b9
Step 6/6 : USER 1001
 ---> Running in 1c1f30c821e0
Removing intermediate container 1c1f30c821e0
 ---> c427dd668ea7
Successfully built c427dd668ea7

I have no idea how to work with the docker things in droplet… Could you please help me with this?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

2

@miner Please can you add requirements.txt and mention pandas in the file.

COPY requirement.txt requirement.txt

3

Isn’t it the same as RUN pip3 install --no-cache-dir pandas works in the Dockerfile? Plus, why do we need to repeat requirement.txt?

4

@miner Yes, my bad its installed successfully, can you share endpoints.yml file.?

5

Here:

  GNU nano 4.8                                       endpoints.yml                                                  
models:
  url: ${RASA_MODEL_SERVER}
  token: ${RASA_X_TOKEN}
  wait_time_between_pulls: ${RASA_MODEL_PULL_INTERVAL}
tracker_store:
  type: sql
  dialect: "postgresql"
  url: ${DB_HOST}
  port: ${DB_PORT}
  username: ${DB_USER}
  password: ${DB_PASSWORD}
  db: ${DB_DATABASE}
  login_db: ${DB_LOGIN_DB}
lock_store:
  type: "redis"
  url: ${REDIS_HOST}
  port: ${REDIS_PORT}
  password: ${REDIS_PASSWORD}
  db: ${REDIS_DB}
cache:
  type: "redis"
  url: ${REDIS_HOST}
  port: ${REDIS_PORT}
  password: ${REDIS_PASSWORD}
  db: ${REDIS_CACHE_DB}
  key_prefix: "rasax_cache"
event_broker:
  type: "pika"
  url: ${RABBITMQ_HOST}
  username: ${RABBITMQ_USERNAME}
  password: ${RABBITMQ_PASSWORD}
  queues:
  - ${RABBITMQ_QUEUE}
action_endpoint:
  url: ${RASA_USER_APP}/webhook
  token:  ""

but I want you to know that my custom action works without modifying it when I don’t use pandas…

6

@miner are you sure this is your endpoint file where actions_endpoint mention? @miner what do you mean by last line in previous post? can you explain more

7

Ah, please ignore the port thing. I’ve edited the comment. And, yes. That’s my endpoints.yml in the etc/rasa.