RASA - Slots in detail
#rasa#chatbot#nlp#ai
Petr Janik

Petr Janik @petr7555

About: I am a software engineer with a deep passion for coding and machine learning. Currently working in React and Python.

Location:
Brno, Czech Republic
Joined:
Dec 2, 2019

RASA - Slots in detail

Publish Date: Jun 3 '21
10 2

Entities are automatically saved to slots that have the same name.

Let's create a new age entity:



# domain.yml
# ... previous content ...
entities:
  # ... previous entities ...
  - age
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and a new age slot:



# domain.yml
# ... previous content ...
slots:
  # ... previous slots ...
  age:
    type: text
    influence_conversation: false
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Let's create a new intent as well:



# data/nlu.yml
# ... previous content ...
  - intent: inform_age
    examples: |
      - My age is [20 years](age)
      - I am [15](age)
      - I am [47 years](age)
      - I am [8 years](age) old
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and add it to domain.yml:



# domain.yml
# ... previous content ...
intents:
  # ... previous intents ...
  - inform_age
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We need the chatbot's response as well:



# domain.yml
# ... previous content ...
  utter_age_back:
    - text: Your age is {age}.
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The story now looks like this:



# stories.yml
# ... previous content ...
  - story: tell age
    steps:
      - intent: inform_age
      - action: utter_age_back
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Let's see this in action:

Utter back age slot

The age entity was automatically saved to the age slot, because the name is the same.
Also, you can see that slots can be overwritten. First, the value of the slot was 17 years and then 64.

If a form contains a slot that is filled before the form is activated, that slot is not asked anymore as part of the form loop.

To demonstrate this, let's create the following story:



# stories.yml
# ... previous content ...
  - story: tell email
    steps:
      - intent: inform_email
      - action: utter_email_back
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Normally, the chatbot would ask "What is your email address?" to fill the email slot. But since the slot is filled beforehand, it asks only frequency and notifications.

Email slot filled before form loop

You can learn more about slots in the documentation or in my previous article.

In the next chapter, we will look at rich responses, such as buttons and images.

Repository for this tutorial:

GitHub logo petr7555 / rasa-dev-tutorial

You can checkout the state of the repository at the end of this tutorial by running:



git clone --branch 15-slots-in-detail git@github.com:petr7555/rasa-dev-tutorial.git
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