How can I take a random input value as a slot variable in Google Actions NLP (google assistant) Console?

Question

Let say I have an app where I want to give someone the weather in a city.

The first scene has a prompt: "What city would you like the weather of?"

I then have to collect a slot/parameter called conv.param.city: and then use it in my node webhook which is:

const { conversation } = require('@assistant/conversation');
const functions = require('firebase-functions');
const app = conversation();

app.handle('schedule', (conv, {location}) => {  
  let temperature = callApi(location);// this part doesn't matter right now

  **conv.add(`You want to know the weather in ${location}`);
  conv.close(`The weather in ${location} is ${temperature}`);
});

exports.ActionsOnGoogleFulfillment = functions.https.onRequest(app);

From what I can tell, you can only take in parameters/slots that are predefined by types/intents. I cannot make a list of all cities that exist to train with. How can I basically say: Whatever the user says at this point, make that word into this variable.

How can i do this with the Google Actions SDK?

Answer 1

You can accomplish this by setting your intent parameter type to be free text (here's an example from one of the sample repos).

freeText: {}

If you apply this type to an intent parameter, you can use the training phrases to provide the necessary context on where in the phrase that "word" should be matched (example from the same repo).

I cannot make a list of all cities that exist to train with.

Another option exists if your API can return the set of locations supported. You can also use runtime type overrides to dynamically generate the type from the list of list of locations the API provides. This will be more accurate, but is dependent on what your data source looks like.