More intuitive session behaviour for api.ai

Author: Uberi

reference/library-reference.rst

@@ -221,16 +221,16 @@ Returns the most likely transcription if ``show_all`` is false (the default). Ot
 
 Raises a ``speech_recognition.UnknownValueError`` exception if the speech is unintelligible. Raises a ``speech_recognition.RequestError`` exception if the speech recognition operation failed, if the key isn't valid, or if there is no internet connection.
 
-``recognizer_instance.recognize_api(audio_data, client_access_token, language = "en", session_id = "session", show_all = False)``
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+``recognizer_instance.recognize_api(audio_data, client_access_token, language = "en", session_id = None, show_all = False)``
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
 Perform speech recognition on ``audio_data`` (an ``AudioData`` instance), using the api.ai Speech to Text API.
 
 The api.ai API client access token is specified by ``client_access_token``. Unfortunately, this is not available without `signing up for an account <https://console.api.ai/api-client/#/signup>`__ and creating an api.ai agent. To get the API client access token, go to the agent settings, go to the section titled "API keys", and look for "Client access token". API client access tokens are 32-character lowercase hexadecimal strings.
 
 Although the recognition language is specified when creating the api.ai agent in the web console, it must also be provided in the ``language`` parameter as an RFC5646 language tag like ``"en"`` (US English) or ``"fr"`` (International French), defaulting to US English. A list of supported language values can be found in the `API documentation <https://api.ai/docs/reference/#languages>`__.
 
-The ``session_id`` is a string of up to 36 characters used to identify the client making the requests; api.ai can make use of previous requests that used the same session ID to give more accurate results for future requests.
+The ``session_id`` is an optional string of up to 36 characters used to identify the client making the requests; api.ai can make use of previous requests that used the same session ID to give more accurate results for future requests. If ``None``, sessions are not used; every query is interpreted as if it is the first one.
 
 Returns the most likely transcription if ``show_all`` is false (the default). Otherwise, returns the `raw API response <https://api.ai/docs/reference/#a-namepost-multipost-query-multipart>`__ as a JSON dictionary.
 

speech_recognition/__init__.py

@@ -799,15 +799,15 @@ def recognize_bing(self, audio_data, key, language = "en-US", show_all = False):
         if "header" not in result or "lexical" not in result["header"]: raise UnknownValueError()
         return result["header"]["lexical"]
 
-    def recognize_api(self, audio_data, client_access_token, language = "en", session_id = "session", show_all = False):
+    def recognize_api(self, audio_data, client_access_token, language = "en", session_id = None, show_all = False):
         """
         Perform speech recognition on ``audio_data`` (an ``AudioData`` instance), using the api.ai Speech to Text API.
 
         The api.ai API client access token is specified by ``client_access_token``. Unfortunately, this is not available without `signing up for an account <https://console.api.ai/api-client/#/signup>`__ and creating an api.ai agent. To get the API client access token, go to the agent settings, go to the section titled "API keys", and look for "Client access token". API client access tokens are 32-character lowercase hexadecimal strings.
 
         Although the recognition language is specified when creating the api.ai agent in the web console, it must also be provided in the ``language`` parameter as an RFC5646 language tag like ``"en"`` (US English) or ``"fr"`` (International French), defaulting to US English. A list of supported language values can be found in the `API documentation <https://api.ai/docs/reference/#languages>`__.
 
-        The ``session_id`` is a string of up to 36 characters used to identify the client making the requests; api.ai can make use of previous requests that used the same session ID to give more accurate results for future requests.
+        The ``session_id`` is an optional string of up to 36 characters used to identify the client making the requests; api.ai can make use of previous requests that used the same session ID to give more accurate results for future requests. If ``None``, sessions are not used; every query is interpreted as if it is the first one.
 
         Returns the most likely transcription if ``show_all`` is false (the default). Otherwise, returns the `raw API response <https://api.ai/docs/reference/#a-namepost-multipost-query-multipart>`__ as a JSON dictionary.
 
@@ -816,7 +816,7 @@ def recognize_api(self, audio_data, client_access_token, language = "en", sessio
         assert isinstance(audio_data, AudioData), "Data must be audio data"
         assert isinstance(client_access_token, str), "`username` must be a string"
         assert isinstance(language, str), "`language` must be a string"
-        assert isinstance(session_id, str) and len(session_id) <= 36, "`session_id` must be a string of up to 36 characters"
+        assert session_id is None or (isinstance(session_id, str) and len(session_id) <= 36), "`session_id` must be a string of up to 36 characters"
 
         wav_data = audio_data.get_wav_data(convert_rate = 16000, convert_width = 2) # audio must be 16-bit mono 16 kHz
         url = "https://api.api.ai/v1/query"
@@ -827,6 +827,7 @@ def recognize_api(self, audio_data, client_access_token, language = "en", sessio
             if boundary.encode("utf-8") not in wav_data:
                 break
 
+        if session_id is None: session_id = uuid.uuid4().hex
         data = (
             b"--" + boundary.encode("utf-8") + b"\r\n" +
             b"Content-Disposition: form-data; name=\"request\"\r\n" +