Ability to convert elements to more basic data structures (FeatureRequest) about python-dialogflow

[Luttik]

I found the following solution:

from google.protobuf.json_format import MessageToDict

result: DetectIntentResponse = detect_intent_texts([request_text], int(session_token, 16), agent_id)
messages = [MessageToDict(x) for x in result.query_result.fulfillment_messages]

This method seems works great it is just hard to find in the documentation.

@dysnomia Thanks for you assistance.

[dysnomia]

Yeah, this shared protobuf type only has very basic documentation at https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/docs/reference/python-generated#struct. There are some more usage examples https://github.com/google/protobuf/blob/master/python/google/protobuf/internal/well_known_types_test.py#L683.

About converting to/from Python types:

• From dict: update seems to directly convert from a dict to a struct: https://github.com/google/protobuf/blob/master/python/google/protobuf/internal/well_known_types_test.py#L818.
• To dict: As far as I can see, there is no direct support for that. But Struct implements (almost) the same interface as dict (https://github.com/google/protobuf/blob/master/python/google/protobuf/internal/well_known_types_test.py#L727). Can you just use it in place of dict instead of converting? For serialization: Can you use the proto serialization (https://github.com/google/protobuf/blob/master/python/google/protobuf/internal/well_known_types_test.py#L715)?

I'll file a bug to improve our shared documentation.

[Luttik]

So serialization works for instance for converting to string, but ToJsonString for instance is not implemented on all objects.

And for instance a Message object does not implement .items(), for that you need to use ListFields() which works slightly different.

I keep running into errors because different object types are used in unexpected places (and a seemingly inconsistent fashion), and I need to convert these elements before i can do something like sending the dialogflow payload to the frontend.

[nnegrey]

This appears to be answered, if not, please feel free to re-open.

Thanks! :)