How logic adapters select a response¶
A typical logic adapter designed to return a response to an input statement will use two main steps to do this. The first step involves searching the database for a known statement that matches or closely matches the input statement. Once a match is selected, the second step involves selecting a known response to the selected match. Frequently, there will be a number of existing statements that are responses to the known match.
To help with the selection of the response, several methods are built into ChatterBot for selecting a response from the available options.
Response selection methods¶
Response selection methods determines which response should be used in the event that multiple responses are generated within a logic adapter.
- chatterbot.response_selection.get_first_response(input_statement, response_list, storage=None)[source]¶
- Parameters:
input_statement (Statement) – A statement, that closely matches an input to the chat bot.
response_list (list) – A list of statement options to choose a response from.
storage (StorageAdapter) – An instance of a storage adapter to allow the response selection method to access other statements if needed.
- Returns:
Return the first statement in the response list.
- Return type:
- chatterbot.response_selection.get_most_frequent_response(input_statement, response_list, storage=None)[source]¶
- Parameters:
input_statement (Statement) – A statement, that closely matches an input to the chat bot.
response_list (list) – A list of statement options to choose a response from.
storage (StorageAdapter) – An instance of a storage adapter to allow the response selection method to access other statements if needed.
- Returns:
The response statement with the greatest number of occurrences.
- Return type:
- chatterbot.response_selection.get_random_response(input_statement, response_list, storage=None)[source]¶
- Parameters:
input_statement (Statement) – A statement, that closely matches an input to the chat bot.
response_list (list) – A list of statement options to choose a response from.
storage (StorageAdapter) – An instance of a storage adapter to allow the response selection method to access other statements if needed.
- Returns:
Choose a random response from the selection.
- Return type:
Use your own response selection method¶
You can create your own response selection method and use it as long as the function takes two parameters (a statements and a list of statements). The method must return a statement.
def select_response(statement, statement_list, storage=None):
# Your selection logic
return selected_statement
Setting the response selection method¶
To set the response selection method for your chat bot, you
will need to pass the response_selection_method parameter
to your chat bot when you initialize it. An example of this
is shown below.
from chatterbot import ChatBot
from chatterbot.response_selection import get_most_frequent_response
chatbot = ChatBot(
# ...
response_selection_method=get_most_frequent_response
)
Response selection in logic adapters¶
When a logic adapter is initialized, the response selection method
parameter that was passed to it can be called using self.select_response
as shown below.
response = self.select_response(
input_statement,
list_of_response_options,
self.chatbot.storage
)
Selecting a response from multiple logic adapters¶
The generate_response method is used to select a single response from the responses
returned by all of the logic adapters that the chat bot has been configured to use.
Each response returned by the logic adapters includes a confidence score that indicates
the likeliness that the returned statement is a valid response to the input.
Response selection¶
The generate_response will return the response statement that has the greatest
confidence score. The only exception to this is a case where multiple logic adapters
return the same statement and therefore agree on that response.
For this example, consider a scenario where multiple logic adapters are being used. Assume the following results were returned by a chat bot’s logic adapters.
Confidence |
Statement |
|---|---|
0.2 |
Good morning |
0.5 |
Good morning |
0.7 |
Good night |
In this case, two of the logic adapters have generated the same result. When multiple logic adapters come to the same conclusion, that statement is given priority over another response with a possibly higher confidence score. The fact that the multiple adapters agreed on a response is a significant indicator that a particular statement has a greater probability of being a more accurate response to the input.
When multiple adapters agree on a response, the greatest confidence score that was generated for that response will be returned with it.
