#2: the key ontology is paired with a dictionary as a value.
#3: the key animal represents the category, and its subcategories are indicated in the list.
#4-6: each subcategory, mammal, reptile, and amphibian, has its own subcategory.
#7: the ontology hierarchy: animal -> mammal -> dog.
Given the ontology, the above transitions can be rewritten as follow:
transitions = {
'state': 'start',
'`What is your favorite animal?`': {
'[#ONT(mammal)]': {
'`I love mammals!`': 'end'
},
'[#ONT(reptile)]': {
'`Reptiles are slick, haha`': 'end'
},
'[#ONT(amphibian)]': {
'`Amphibians can be cute :)`': 'end'
},
'error': {
'`I\'ve never heard of that animal.`': 'end'
}
}
}
#4: matches the key "mammal" as well as its subcategories: "dog", "ape", and "rat".
#5: matches the key "reptile" as well as its subcategories: "snake" and "lizard".
#6: matches the key "amphibian" as well as its subcategories: "frog" and "salamander".
S: What is your favorite animal?
U: I love frogs
S: Amphibians can be cute :)
Unlike set matching, ontology matching handles plurals (e.g., "frogs").
S: What is your favorite animal?
U: I love my golden retriever
S: I love mammals!
Although there is no condition specified for the category dog that includes "golden retriever", there is a condition for its supercategory mammal (#4), to which it backs off.
S: What is your favorite animal?
U: I cannot live without my puppy!
S: I've never heard of that animal.
Currently, ontology matching does not handle plurals for compound nouns (e.g., "golden retrievers"), which will be fixed in the following version.
Expression
It is possible that a category is mentioned in a non-canonical way; the above conditions do not match "puppy" because it is not introduced as a category in the ontology. In this case, we can specify the aliases as "expressions":
#10: the key expressions is paired with a dictionary as a value.
#4: allows matching "canine" and "puppy" for the dog category.
Once you load the updated JSON file, it now understands "puppy" as an expression of "dog":
S: What is your favorite animal?
U: I cannot live without my puppy!
S: I love mammals!
It is possible to match "puppy" by adding the term as a category of "dog" (#7). However, it would not be a good practice as "puppy" should not be considered a subcategory of "dog".
Variable
Values matched by the ontology can also be stored in variables:
transitions = {
'state': 'start',
'`What is your favorite animal?`': {
'[$FAVORITE_ANIMAL=#ONT(mammal)]': {
'`I love` $FAVORITE_ANIMAL `!`': 'end'
},
'[$FAVORITE_ANIMAL=#ONT(reptile)]': {
'$FAVORITE_ANIMAL `are slick, haha`': 'end'
},
'[$FAVORITE_ANIMAL=#ONT(amphibian)]': {
'$FAVORITE_ANIMAL `can be cute :)`': 'end'
},
'error': {
'`I\'ve never heard of that animal.`': 'end'
}
}
}
#4,7,10: the matched term gets stored in the variable FAVORITE_ANIMAL.
#5,8,11: the system uses the value of FAVORITE_ANIMAL to generate the response.
S: What is your favorite animal?
U: I love frogs
S: frogs can be cute :)
S: What is your favorite animal?
U: I can't live without my puppy!
S: I love puppy !
Loading
The custom ontology must be loaded to the knowledge base of the dialogue flow before it runs:
For each type of animal, however, the list can be indefinitely long (e.g., there are over 5,400 mammal species). In this case, it is better to use an (e.g., , ).
Let us create a JSON file, , containing an ontology of animals:
