In this post, you will learn how to get the current location of a user for your action using Dialogflow Helper Intents

Objectives

What is Google Assistant
What is Cloud Function
Create a new action in Google Assistant
Custom action using Dialogflow
Fulfilment logic to Cloud Function
Test your action

Prerequisites

Google Cloud Account
Pair of headphones or turning the volume up on your computer is recommended.

1. What is Google Assistant

Google Assistant is a personal voice assistant that offers a host of actions and integrations. From sending texts and setting reminders, to ordering coffee and playing music, the 1 million+ actions available suit a wide range of voice command needs.

2. What is Cloud Function

Google Cloud Functions is a lightweight compute solution for developers to create single-purpose, stand-alone functions that respond to cloud events without the need to manage a server or runtime environment.

3. Creating a new action in Google Assistant

Regardless of the Assistant application, you’re building, you will always have to create an Actions project so your app has an underlying organizational unit.

Open the Actions on Google Developer Console in a new tab. You should be looking at a clean Actions console that resembles the following (If you are a new user (:

Actions on Google Console

Click Add/import project and agree to Actions on Google’s terms of service when prompted.

Click into the Project Name field and add the project name Location Tracker

Adding project name

Once the project is created you will see a welcome screen like below, scroll down and select Conversational

Conversational

Once the Conversational is selected click the Invocation option at the left bar and set the Display Name as Location Tracker

Invocation Name

Once the Invocation name is given click Actions and select Get Started to Build your first action

Actions

Now Select Custom intent and click Build

Custom intent

4. Custom action using Dialogflow

It will now navigate to the Dialogflow console. In the Dialogflow console check whether the agent name is Location Tracker or not

Dialogflow agent

Now click Create if the agent name is the same as your Action name

Once the agent is created on the left side you will see Intents. Click Intents

By default, you could see two intents namely

Default Welcome Intent
Default Fallback Intent

Click Default Welcome Intent

Default Welcome Intent

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Now just scroll down you could see some Responses like the below image

Response

Delete all the default response and create a new response like Hi! Welcome to Location Tracker

Once the response is added click Save

Now click the + button in Intents and give a new intent name like get_currentlocation

Get Current Location Intent

In the Training Phrase add some location by default the @sys.location entity should match up like the above image.

Now scroll down and select Fulfilment section and Enable webhook call for the intent

Enable Webhook

Click Save and then click Test tab you could see the message as Hi! Welcome to Location Tracker

Testing your action

5. Fulfilment logic to Cloud Function

Now we will create the firebase cloud function, Go to your local terminal and create a new directory named Location Tracker and navigate to that directory

Once navigated initialize Firebase Cloud Function using the command firebase init and then select Cloud Function and select the default project as Location Tracker

Once the project is select Firebase CLI will create the below files and node_modules folder

index.js
package.json

Now install the actions-on-google plugin using the command npm i actions-on-google

Once the plugin is installed, Open a text editor and select index.js file

Import the dependencies like below by removing the existing code

const functions = require("firebase-functions");  
const { dialogflow, Permission, SimpleResponse } = require("actions-on-google");  

const app = dialogflow();

Now what we will do is when the user opens the action we will get permission from the user to get the current location of the user from Google.

If the user says Yes then we will take the Latitude and Longitude

For that, we need to refactor the Default Welcome Intent in Dialogflow

In the Default Welcome Intent remove the existing Training phrases and add the below

where am i
locate me

Once it is added scroll down and enable the Webhook.

Now go to the get_current_location intent and click Events and select actions_intent_permission and remove all the Training phrases

Now go to your cloud functions index.js file and create the Default Welcome Intent like below

app.intent("Default Welcome Intent", conv => {  
  conv.data.requestedPermission = "DEVICE_PRECISE_LOCATION";  
  conv.ask(new SimpleResponse('Welcome to location tracker'));  
  return conv.ask(  
    new Permission({  
      context: "to locate you",  
      permissions: conv.data.requestedPermission  
    })  
  );  
});

In the above code, we are getting the user permission to take the current location of the user from Google

Once the user says Yes or No it will trigger the get_current_location intent like below

Now deploy this code using the command firebase deploy . Once your code is deployed you will get a Webhook URL.

Copy the webhook URL and paste the webhook URL in Dialogflow

Now if you run the action you could see an output like below

Source: Nidhinkumar

Now we are able to get the Latitude and Longitude of a particular user. We can get the Address of the user using Latitude and Longitude using geocoder reverse

To show the address we will install the plugin npm i node-geocoder . Once the plugin is installed import the dependency like below

const NodeGeocoder = require("node-geocoder");

Once imported go to the get_current_location intent and add the below code

Now if you deploy the latest changes you will get the output like below

In the above demo, you could notice that before showing the address the conversation is closed.

Option 2

If you don’t want to use reverse geolocation Google Assistant Helper Intents will show the formatted address add the below code in get_currentlocation intent

const { location } = conv.device;  
conv.ask(new SimpleResponse(`Your address is ${location.formattedAddress}`))

6. Test your action

Deploy your action you could see the output like below

Source: Nidhinkumar

Reference Links

Dialogflow get a current location — Click here to view
Helper Intents — Click here to view

Congratulations!

You have learned how to get the current location of the user from Google using Helper Intent. Happy Learning :)

Get Current Location of a user using Helper Intents in Actions on Google