d3v4n5h / python-sdk

:snake: Client library to use the IBM Watson services in Python and available in pip as watson-developer-cloud

Watson Developer Cloud Python SDK

Python client library to quickly get started with the various Watson APIs services.

Table of Contents

• Before you begin
• Installation
• Examples
• AssistantV2
• Running in IBM Cloud
• Authentication
  • Getting credentials
  • IAM
  • Username and password
• Python version
• Changes for v1.0
• Changes for v2.0
• Migration
• Configuring the http client
• Disable SSL certificate verification
• Sending request headers
• Parsing HTTP response info
• Dependencies
• License
• Contributing

Before you begin

• You need an IBM Cloud account.

Installation

To install, use pip or easy_install:

pip install --upgrade watson-developer-cloud

or

easy_install --upgrade watson-developer-cloud

Note the following:

a) If you run into permission issues try:

sudo -H pip install --ignore-installed six watson-developer-cloud

For more details see #225

b) In case you run into problems installing the SDK in DSX, try

!pip install --upgrade pip

Restarting the kernel

For more details see #405

Examples

The examples folder has basic and advanced examples. The examples within each service assume that you already have service credentials.

Note: Conversation V1 is deprecated and will be removed in the next major release of the SDK. Use Assistant V1 or Assistant V2.

AssistantV2

Watson Assistant V2 API is released in beta. For details, see the "Introducing Watson Assistant" blog post.

Running in IBM Cloud

If you run your app in IBM Cloud, the SDK gets credentials from the VCAP_SERVICES environment variable.

Authentication

Watson services are migrating to token-based Identity and Access Management (IAM) authentication.

• With some service instances, you authenticate to the API by using IAM.
• In other instances, you authenticate by providing the username and password for the service instance.

Note: Authenticating with the X-Watson-Authorization-Token header is deprecated. The token continues to work with Cloud Foundry services, but is not supported for services that use Identity and Access Management (IAM) authentication. See here for details.

Getting credentials

To find out which authentication to use, view the service credentials. You find the service credentials for authentication the same way for all Watson services:

1. Go to the IBM Cloud Dashboard page.
2. Either click an existing Watson service instance or click Create resource > AI and create a service instance.
3. Copy the url and either apikey or username and password. Click Show if the credentials are masked.

IAM

IBM Cloud is migrating to token-based Identity and Access Management (IAM) authentication. IAM authentication uses a service API key to get an access token that is passed with the call. Access tokens are valid for approximately one hour and must be regenerated.

You supply either an IAM service API key or an access token:

• Use the API key to have the SDK manage the lifecycle of the access token. The SDK requests an access token, ensures that the access token is valid, and refreshes it if necessary.
• Use the access token if you want to manage the lifecycle yourself. For details, see Authenticating with IAM tokens.

Supplying the IAM API key

# In the constructor, letting the SDK manage the IAM token
discovery = DiscoveryV1(version='2018-08-01',
                        url='<url_as_per_region>',
                        iam_apikey='<iam_apikey>',
                        iam_url='<iam_url>') # optional - the default value is https://iam.bluemix.net/identity/token

# after instantiation, letting the SDK manage the IAM token
discovery = DiscoveryV1(version='2018-08-01', url='<url_as_per_region>')
discovery.set_iam_apikey('<iam_apikey>')

Supplying the access token

# in the constructor, assuming control of managing IAM token
discovery = DiscoveryV1(version='2018-08-01',
                        url='<url_as_per_region>',
                        iam_access_token='<iam_access_token>')

# after instantiation, assuming control of managing IAM token
discovery = DiscoveryV1(version='2018-08-01', url='<url_as_per_region>')
discovery.set_iam_access_token('<access_token>')

Username and password

from watson_developer_cloud import DiscoveryV1
# In the constructor
discovery = DiscoveryV1(version='2018-08-01', url='<url_as_per_region>', username='<username>', password='<password>')

# After instantiation
discovery = DiscoveryV1(version='2018-08-01', url='<url_as_per_region>')
discovery.set_username_and_password('<username>', '<password>')

Python version

Tested on Python 2.7, 3.4, 3.5, and 3.6.

Changes for v1.0

Version 1.0 focuses on the move to programmatically-generated code for many of the services. See the changelog for the details.

Changes for v2.0

DetailedResponse which contains the result, headers and HTTP status code is now the default response for all methods.

from watson_developer_cloud import AssistantV1

assistant = AssistantV1(
    username='xxx',
    password='yyy',
    url='<url_as_per_region>',
    version='2018-07-10')

response = assistant.list_workspaces(headers={'Custom-Header': 'custom_value'})
print(response.get_result())
print(response.get_headers())
print(response.get_status_code())

See the changelog for the details.

Migration

This version includes many breaking changes as a result of standardizing behavior across the new generated services. Full details on migration from previous versions can be found here.

Configuring the http client (Supported from v1.1.0)

To set client configs like timeout use the with_http_config() function and pass it a dictionary of configs.

from watson_developer_cloud import AssistantV1

assistant = AssistantV1(
    username='xxx',
    password='yyy',
    url='<url_as_per_region>',
    version='2018-07-10')

assistant.set_http_config({'timeout': 100})
response = assistant.message(workspace_id=workspace_id, input={
    'text': 'What\'s the weather like?'}).get_result()
print(json.dumps(response, indent=2))

Disable SSL certificate verification

For ICP(IBM Cloud Private), you can disable the SSL certificate verification by:

service.disable_SSL_verification()

Sending request headers

Custom headers can be passed in any request in the form of a dict as:

headers = {
    'Custom-Header': 'custom_value'
}

For example, to send a header called Custom-Header to a call in Watson Assistant, pass the headers parameter as:

from watson_developer_cloud import AssistantV1

assistant = AssistantV1(
    username='xxx',
    password='yyy',
    url='<url_as_per_region>',
    version='2018-07-10')

response = assistant.list_workspaces(headers={'Custom-Header': 'custom_value'}).get_result()

Parsing HTTP response info

If you would like access to some HTTP response information along with the response model, you can set the set_detailed_response() to True. Since Python SDK v2.0, it is set to True

from watson_developer_cloud import AssistantV1

assistant = AssistantV1(
    username='xxx',
    password='yyy',
    url='<url_as_per_region>',
    version='2018-07-10')

assistant.set_detailed_response(True)
response = assistant.list_workspaces(headers={'Custom-Header': 'custom_value'}).get_result()
print(response)

This would give an output of DetailedResponse having the structure:

{
    'result': <response returned by service>,
    'headers': { <http response headers> },
    'status_code': <http status code>
}

You can use the get_result(), get_headers() and get_status_code() to return the result, headers and status code respectively.

Dependencies

• requests
• python_dateutil >= 2.5.3
• responses for testing
• Following for web sockets support in speech to text
  • websocket-client 0.47.0

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md.

License

This library is licensed under the Apache 2.0 license.