Build your web app (Dialogflow)

A web app is the UI for an Action that uses Interactive Canvas. You can use existing web technologies (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript) to design and develop your web app. For the most part, Interactive Canvas is able to render web content like a browser, but there are a few restrictions enforced for user privacy and security. Before you begin designing your UI, consider the design principles outlined in the Design guidelines section.

The HTML and JavaScript for your web app do the following:

  • Register Interactive Canvas event callbacks.
  • Initialize the Interactive Canvas JavaScript library.
  • Provide custom logic for updating your web app based on the state.

This page goes over the recommended ways to build your web app, how to enable communication between your web app and fulfillment, and general guidelines and restrictions.

While you can use any method to build your UI, Google recommends using the following libraries:

Architecture

Google strongly recommends using a single-page application architecture. This approach allows for optimal performance and supports continuous conversational user experience. Interactive Canvas can be used in conjunction with front-end frameworks like Vue, Angular, and React, which help with state management.

HTML file

The HTML file defines how your UI looks. This file also loads the Interactive Canvas JavaScript library, which enables communication between your web app and your conversational Action.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1">
    <title>Immersive Canvas Sample</title>
    <!-- Disable favicon requests -->
    <link rel="shortcut icon" type="image/x-icon" href="data:image/x-icon;,">
    <!-- Load Interactive Canvas JavaScript -->
    <script src="https://www.gstatic.com/assistant/df-asdk/interactivecanvas/api/interactive_canvas.min.js"></script>
    <!-- Load PixiJS for graphics rendering -->
    <script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/pixi.js/4.8.7/pixi.min.js"></script>
    <!-- Load Stats.js for fps monitoring -->
    <script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/stats.js/r16/Stats.min.js"></script>
    <!-- Load custom CSS -->
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="css/main.css">
  </head>
  <body>
    <div id="view" class="view">
      <div class="debug">
        <div class="stats"></div>
        <div class="logs"></div>
      </div>
    </div>
    <!-- Load custom JavaScript after elements are on page -->
    <script src="js/main.js"></script>
    <script src="js/log.js"></script>
  </body>
</html>

Communicate between fulfillment and web app

Now that you've built your web app and fulfillment and loaded in the Interactive Canvas library in your web app file, you need to define how your web app and fulfillment interact. To do this, modify the files that contain your web app logic.

action.js

This file contains the code to define callbacks and invoke methods through interactiveCanvas. Callbacks allow your web app to respond to information or requests from the conversational Action, while methods provide a way to send information or requests to the conversational Action.

Add interactiveCanvas.ready(callbacks); to your HTML file to initialize and register callbacks:

//action.js
class Action {
  constructor(scene) {
    this.canvas = window.interactiveCanvas;
    this.scene = scene;
    const that = this;
    this.commands = {
      TINT: function(data) {
        that.scene.sprite.tint = data.tint;
      },
      SPIN: function(data) {
        that.scene.sprite.spin = data.spin;
      },
      RESTART_GAME: function(data) {
        that.scene.button.texture = that.scene.button.textureButton;
        that.scene.sprite.spin = true;
        that.scene.sprite.tint = 0x0000FF; // blue
        that.scene.sprite.rotation = 0;
      },
    };
  }

  /**
   * Register all callbacks used by Interactive Canvas
   * executed during scene creation time.
   *
   */
  setCallbacks() {
    const that = this;
    // declare interactive canvas callbacks
    const callbacks = {
      onUpdate(data) {
        try {
          that.commands[data.command.toUpperCase()](data);
        } catch (e) {
          // do nothing, when no command is sent or found
        }
      },
    };
    // called by the Interactive Canvas web app once web app has loaded to
    // register callbacks
    this.canvas.ready(callbacks);
  }
}

main.js

This file constructs the scene for your web app. In this example, it also handles the success and failure cases of the promise returned with sendTextQuery(). The following is an excerpt from main.js:

// main.js
const view = document.getElementById('view');
// initialize rendering and set correct sizing
this.renderer = PIXI.autoDetectRenderer({
  transparent: true,
  antialias: true,
  resolution: this.radio,
  width: view.clientWidth,
  height: view.clientHeight,
});
view.appendChild(this.element);

// center stage and normalize scaling for all resolutions
this.stage = new PIXI.Container();
this.stage.position.set(view.clientWidth / 2, view.clientHeight / 2);
this.stage.scale.set(Math.max(this.renderer.width,
    this.renderer.height) / 1024);

// load a sprite from a svg file
this.sprite = PIXI.Sprite.from('triangle.svg');
this.sprite.anchor.set(0.5);
this.sprite.tint = 0x00FF00; // green
this.sprite.spin = true;
this.stage.addChild(this.sprite);

// toggle spin on touch events of the triangle
this.sprite.interactive = true;
this.sprite.buttonMode = true;
this.sprite.on('pointerdown', () => {
  this.sprite.spin = !this.sprite.spin;
});

Support touch interactions

Your Interactive Canvas Action can respond to your user's touch as well as their vocal inputs. Per the Interactive Canvas design guidelines, you should develop your Action to be "voice-first". That being said, some Smart Displays support touch interactions.

Supporting touch is similar to supporting conversational responses; however, instead of a vocal response from the user, your client-side JavaScript looks for touch interactions and uses those to change elements in the web app.

You can see an example of this in the sample, which uses the Pixi.js library:

...
this.sprite = PIXI.Sprite.from('triangle.svg');
...
this.sprite.interactive = true; // Enables interaction events
this.sprite.buttonMode = true; // Changes `cursor` property to `pointer` for PointerEvent
this.sprite.on('pointerdown', () => {
  this.sprite.spin = !this.sprite.spin;
});
...

In this case, the value of the spin variable is sent through the interactiveCanvas API as an update callback. The fulfillment has logic that triggers an intent based on the value of spin.

...
app.intent('pause', (conv) => {
  conv.ask(`Ok, I paused spinning. What else?`);
  conv.ask(new HtmlResponse({
    data: {
      spin: false,
    },
  }));
});
...

Add more features

Now that you've learned the basics, you can enhance and customize your Action with Canvas-specific APIs. This section explains how to implement these APIs in your Interactive Canvas Action.

sendTextQuery()

The sendTextQuery() method sends text queries to the conversational Action to programmatically invoke an intent. This sample uses sendTextQuery() to restart the triangle-spinning game when the user clicks a button. When the user clicks the "Restart game" button, sendTextQuery() calls the Restart game intent and returns a promise. This promise results in SUCCESS if the intent is triggered and BLOCKED if it is not. The following snippet triggers the intent and handles the success and failure cases of the promise:

//main.js
...
that.action.canvas.sendTextQuery('Restart game')
    .then((res) => {
      if (res.toUpperCase() === 'SUCCESS') {
        console.log(`Request in flight: ${res}`);
        that.button.texture = that.button.textureButtonDisabled;
        that.sprite.spin = false;
      } else {
        console.log(`Request in flight: ${res}`);
      }
    });
...

If the promise results in SUCCESS, the Restart game intent sends an HtmlResponse to your web app:

//index.js
...
app.intent('restart game', (conv) => {
  conv.ask(new HtmlResponse({
    data: {
      command: 'RESTART_GAME',
    },
...

This HtmlResponse triggers the onUpdate() callback, which executes the code in the RESTART_GAME code snippet below:

//action.js
...
RESTART_GAME: function(data) {
  that.scene.button.texture = that.scene.button.textureButton;
  that.scene.sprite.spin = true;
  that.scene.sprite.tint = 0x0000FF; // blue
  that.scene.sprite.rotation = 0;
},
...

OnTtsMark()

The OnTtsMark() callback is called when you include a <mark> tag with a unique name in your SSML response to the user. In the following excerpts from the Snowman sample, OnTtsMark() synchronizes the web app's animation with the corresponding TTS output. When the Action has said to the user Sorry, you lost, the web app spells out the correct word and displays the letters to the user.

The intent Game Over Reveal Word includes a custom mark in the response to the user when they've lost the game:

//index.js
...
app.intent('Game Over Reveal Word', (conv, {word}) => {
  conv.ask(`<speak>Sorry, you lost.<mark name="REVEAL_WORD"/> The word is ${word}.` +
    `${PLAY_AGAIN_INSTRUCTIONS}</speak>`);
  conv.ask(new HtmlResponse());
});
...

The following code snippet then registers the OnTtsMark() callback, checks the name of the mark, and executes the revealCorrectWord() function, which updates the web app:

//action.js
...
setCallbacks() {
  const that = this;
  // declare assistant canvas action callbacks
  const callbacks = {
    onTtsMark(markName) {
      if (markName === 'REVEAL_WORD') {
        // display the correct word to the user
        that.revealCorrectWord();
      }
    },
...

Restrictions

Take the following restrictions into consideration as you develop your web app:

  • No cookies
  • No local storage
  • No geolocation
  • No camera usage
  • No popups
  • Stay under the 200mb memory limit
  • 3P Header takes up upper portion of screen
  • No styles can be applied to videos
  • Only one media element may be used at a time
  • No HLS video
  • No Web SQL database
  • No support for the SpeechRecognition interface of the Web Speech API.
  • No audio or video recording
  • Dark mode setting not applicable

Cross-origin resource sharing

Because Interactive Canvas web apps are hosted in an iframe and the origin is set to null, you must enable cross-origin resource sharing (CORS) for your web servers and storage resources. This allows your assets to accept requests from null origins.