Ruby gem to quickly get started with the various IBM Watson services.
Table of Contents
- You need an IBM Cloud account.
Install the gem:
gem install ibm_watsonInstall with development dependencies:
gem install --dev ibm_watsonInside of your Ruby program do:
require "ibm_watson"The examples folder has basic and advanced examples. The examples within each service assume that you already have service credentials.
If you run your app in IBM Cloud, the SDK gets credentials from the VCAP_SERVICES environment variable.
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.
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:
- Go to the IBM Cloud Dashboard page.
- Either click an existing Watson service instance in your resource list or click Create resource > AI and create a service instance.
- Click on the Manage item in the left nav bar of your service instance.
On this page, you should be able to see your credentials for accessing your service instance.
There are two ways to supply the credentials you found above to the SDK for authentication.
With a credential file, you just need to put the file in the right place and the SDK will do the work of parsing and authenticating. You can get this file by clicking the Download button for the credentials in the Manage tab of your service instance.
The file downloaded will be called ibm-credentials.env. This is the name the SDK will search for and must be preserved unless you want to configure the file path (more on that later). The SDK will look for your ibm-credentials.env file in the following places (in order):
- Your system's home directory
- The top-level directory of the project you're using the SDK in
As long as you set that up correctly, you don't have to worry about setting any authentication options in your code. So, for example, if you created and downloaded the credential file for your Discovery instance, you just need to do the following:
discovery = DiscoveryV1(version: "2018-08-01")And that's it!
If you're using more than one service at a time in your code and get two different ibm-credentials.env files, just put the contents together in one ibm-credentials.env file and the SDK will handle assigning credentials to their appropriate services.
If you would like to configure the location/name of your credential file, you can set an environment variable called IBM_CREDENTIALS_FILE. This will take precedence over the locations specified above. Here's how you can do that:
export IBM_CREDENTIALS_FILE="<path>"where <path> is something like /home/user/Downloads/<file_name>.env.
If you'd prefer to set authentication values manually in your code, the SDK supports that as well. The way you'll do this depends on what type of credentials your service instance gives you.
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.
# In the constructor, letting the SDK manage the IAM token
discovery = IBMWatson::DiscoveryV1.new(
version: "2017-10-16",
iam_apikey: "<iam_apikey>",
iam_url: "<iam_url>" # optional - the default value is https://iam.cloud.ibm.com/identity/token
)# after instantiation, letting the SDK manage the IAM token
discovery = IBMWatson::DiscoveryV1.new(version: "2017-10-16")
discovery.iam_apikey(iam_apikey: "<iam_apikey>")# in the constructor, assuming control of managing IAM token
discovery = IBMWatson::DiscoveryV1.new(
version: "2017-10-16",
iam_access_token: "<iam_access_token>"
)# after instantiation, assuming control of managing IAM token
discovery = IBMWatson::DiscoveryV1.new(version: "2017-10-16")
discovery.iam_access_token(iam_access_token: "<access_token>")require "ibm_watson"
include IBMWatson
# In the constructor
discovery = DiscoveryV1.new(version: "2017-10-16", username: "<username>", password: "<password>")# After instantiation
discovery = DiscoveryV1.new(version: "2017-10-16")
discovery.username = "<username>"
discovery.password = "<password>"Requests can be sent asynchronously. There are two asynchronous methods available for the user, async & await. When used, these methods return an Ivar object.
- To call a method asynchronously, simply insert
.awaitor.asyncinto the call:service.translatewould beservice.async.translate - To access the response from an Ivar object called
future, simply callfuture.value
When await is used, the request is made synchronously.
speech_to_text = IBMWatson::SpeechToTextV1.new(
username: "username",
password: "password"
)
audio_file = File.open(Dir.getwd + "/resources/speech.wav")
future = speech_to_text.await.recognize(
audio: audio_file
)
p future.complete? # If the request is successful, then this will be true
output = future.value # The response is accessible at future.valueWhen async is used, the request is made asynchronously
speech_to_text = IBMWatson::SpeechToTextV1.new(
username: "username",
password: "password"
)
audio_file = File.open(Dir.getwd + "/resources/speech.wav")
future = speech_to_text.async.recognize(
audio: audio_file
)
p future.complete? # Can be false if the request is still running
future.wait # Wait for the asynchronous call to finish
p future.complete? # If the request is successful, then this will now be true
output = future.valueCustom headers can be passed in any request in the form of a Hash as a parameter to the headers chainable method. For example, to send a header called Custom-Header to a call in Watson Assistant, pass the headers as a parameter to the headers chainable method:
require "ibm_watson"
include IBMWatson
assistant = AssistantV1.new(
username: "xxx",
password: "yyy",
version: "2017-04-21"
)
response = assistant.headers(
"Custom-Header" => "custom_value"
).list_workspacesHTTP requests all return DetailedResponse objects that have a result, status, and headers
require "ibm_watson"
include IBMWatson
assistant = AssistantV1.new(
username: "xxx",
password: "yyy",
version: "2017-04-21"
)
response = assistant.headers(
"Custom-Header" => "custom_value"
).list_workspaces
p "Status: #{response.status}"
p "Headers: #{response.headers}"
p "Result: #{response.result}"This would give an output of DetailedResponse having the structure:
Status: 200
Headers: "<http response headers>"
Result: "<response returned by service>"To set client configs like timeout or proxy use the configure_http_client function and pass in the configurations.
require "ibm_watson/assistant_v1"
include IBMWatson
assistant = AssistantV1.new(
username: "{username}",
password: "{password}",
version: "2018-07-10"
)
assistant.configure_http_client(
timeout: {
# Accepts either :per_operation or :global
per_operation: { # The individual timeouts for each operation
read: 5,
write: 7,
connect: 10
}
# global: 30 # The total timeout time
},
proxy: {
address: "bogus_address.com",
port: 9999,
username: "username",
password: "password",
headers: {
bogus_header: true
}
}
)The HTTP client can be configured to disable SSL verification. Note that this has serious security implications - only do this if you really mean to!
To do this, pass disable_ssl_verification as true in configure_http_client(), like below:
require "ibm_watson/assistant_v1"
include IBMWatson
service = AssistantV1.new(
version: "<version>",
username: "<username>",
password: "<password>",
)
service.configure_http_client(disable_ssl_verification: true)The Speech-to-Text service supports websockets with the recognize_using_websocket method. The method accepts a custom callback class. The eventmachine loop that the websocket uses blocks the main thread by default. Here is an example of using the websockets method:
require "ibm_watson"
callback = IBMWatson::RecognizeCallback.new
audio_file = "<Audio File for Analysis>"
speech_to_text = IBMWatson::SpeechToTextV1.new(
username: "<username>",
password: "<password>"
)
websocket = speech_to_text.recognize_using_websocket(
audio: audio_file,
recognize_callback: callback,
interim_results: true
)
thr = Thread.new do # Start the websocket inside of a thread
websocket.start # Starts the websocket and begins sending audio to the server.
# The `callback` processes the data from the server
end
thr.join # Wait for the thread to finish before ending the program or running other codeNote: recognize_with_websocket has been deprecated in favor of recognize_using_websocket
If your service instance is of ICP4D, below are two ways of initializing the assistant service.
The SDK will manage the token for the user
assistant = IBMWatson::AssistantV1.new(
version: "<version>",
username: "<username>",
password: "<password>",
url: "<service url>",
icp4d_url: "<authentication url>",
authentication_type: "icp4d"
)
assistant.configure_http_client(disable_ssl_verification: true) # MAKE SURE SSL VERIFICATION IS DISABLED assistant = IBMWatson::AssistantV1.new(
version: "<version>",
url: "<service url>",
icp4d_token: "<your managed access token>",
authentication_type: "icp4d"
)
assistant.configure_http_client(disable_ssl_verification: true) # MAKE SURE SSL VERIFICATION IS DISABLEDTested on:
- MRI Ruby (RVM): 2.3.7, 2.4.4, 2.5.1
- RubyInstaller (Windows x64): 2.3.3, 2.4.4, 2.5.1
See CONTRIBUTING.md.
This library is licensed under the Apache 2.0 license.
Here are some projects that have been using the SDK:
We'd love to highlight cool open-source projects that use this SDK! If you'd like to get your project added to the list, feel free to make an issue linking us to it.
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